THE  REAL  COLLEGE 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 


Bo 
GUY  POTTER  BENTON 

President  of  Miami  University 


One  of  the  Memorial  Volumes  issued  in 
connection  with  the  exercises  attendant 
upon  the  celebration  of  the  one  hundredth 
anniversary  of  the  founding  of  the  Miami 
University— A  REAL  COLLEGE. 


Cincinnati:   Jennings  and   Graham 
New   York:    Eaton   and   Mains 


Copyrghl.  1909. 
By  Jennings  and  Graham 


Who  has  never  lost  faith  in  her  son,  and 
whose  heroic  sacrifices  and  persistent  ambi- 
tion for  him  have  made  it  possible  for  him  to 
breathe,  for  twenty- five  years,  as  student  and 
teacher,  the  atmosphere  of  The  Real  College. 


530<K>* 


'-*   A 


PREFACE 


The  Place  of  the  Small  College,  The  Mission 
of  the  Small  College,  and  kindred  topics,  are 
among  the  most  prominent  and  frequent  on  the 
programs  of  latter-day  college  associations  and 
educational  conventions. 

There  is  no  place  or  mission  for  the  "  smair 
college.  Ours  is  a  day  of  big  things.  The  ad- 
jective small  used  to  qualify  anything  is  suggest- 
ive of  insignificance  and  begets  contempt  An 
educational  institution  may  be  large  in  financial 
resources  and  equipment  and  great  in  the  lofty 
purpose  of  its  existence,  but  because  it  is,  by 
choice,  limited  in  the  size  of  its  student  body 
alone,  it  is  wrongly  called  small.  It  is  to  correct 
this  persisting  misconception  that  this  little  volume 
is  given  to  the  Public. 

It  is  worth  while  to  distinguish  clearly  the 
efficient  from  the  inefficient  The  Peal  College  is 
never  a  small  college.  The  small  college  is  never 
a  Peal  College.  Years  of  experience  and  ob- 
servation have  convinced  the  writer  that  the  insti- 

7 


PEEFACE 

tution  small  in  enrollment  may  be  truly  great,  and 
that  a  large  attendance  mag  be  registered  in  an 
exceedingly  small  institution.  First  of  all,  then, 
a  definition  of  the  Real  College  is  attempted. 
After  that  the  president  of  the  Real  College,  the 
students  of  the  Real  College,  and  the  faculty  of 
the  Real  College  are  studied  in  the  order  named 
Last  of  all,  a  picture  of  The  Real  College  Man  is 
attempted. 

If  in  this  Centennial  year  of  the  founding  of  a 
Real  College,  so  small  a  memorial  book  shall,  in 
any  way,  quicken  in  its  readers  their  appreciation 
of  the  worth  of  the  Real  College,  the  object  of  its 
author's  labor  of  love  will  have  been  accom- 
plished 


GUY  POTTER  BENTON. 


Miami  University,  Oxford,  Ohio, 
The  First  of  June,  Nine- 
teen Hundred  and 
Nine. 


8 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 

Precedent  is  sacred  in  England.  In 
America  it  is  a  convenience.  A  Court  de- 
cision is  accepted  by  ns  as  binding  so  long 
as  it  supports  our  contention  or  until  it  runs 
contrary  to  our  wishes  and  we  convince  a 
succeeding  Court  of  its  fallacy.  If  tradi- 
tion in  the  New  World  but  bore  the  seal  of 
value  it  wears  across  the  seas,  we  had  never 
been  so  hopelessly  lost  in  our  attempt  to 
find  proper  definitions  for  the  names  ap- 
plied to  our  various  educational  institutions. 
In  the  British  Isles,  and  on  the  Continent, 
the  use  of  the  word  " college"  is  so  univer- 
sally accepted  as  meaning  but  one  thing  that 
it  is  at  once  clearly  differentiated  from  the 
university,  which  every  one  understands  to 
be  an  institution  of  another  class.  In  this 
country  we  use  college,  academy,  seminary, 
and  university  as  satisfactory  synonyms  with 
such  profane  disregard  for  the  customs  of 
the  centuries  that,  after  an  institution  has 

11 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

been  given  its  name,  several  explanatory 
sentences  inevitably  follow  to  make  plain  the 
field  of  intellectual  endeavor  it  is  supposed 
to  cover.  In  every  State  of  the  Union  we 
have  had  institutions  with  but  one  little  build- 
ing, a  half-dozen  teachers,  a  half-hundred 
students,  a  diminutive  library,  and  a  paucity 
of  apparatus,  each  wearing  the  name  of  uni- 
versity as  its  proud  corporate  right.  On  the 
other  hand  there  are  numerous  institutions 
bearing  unpretentiously  the  name  of  college, 
which,  in  consideration  of  the  scope  and  va- 
riety of  work  covered,  belong,  by  right,  to 
the  university  class. 

It  would  be  unfair  to  condemn  too 
strongly  those  founders  of  institutions  who 
have  taken  this  liberty  with  terms  of  estab- 
lished meaning.  Our  country  is  new,  and, 
coincident  with  the  beginnings  of  the  State, 
came  the  founding  of  educational  institu- 
tions. We  are  a  people  of  large  expecta- 
tions, and  a  sanely  optimistic  view  of  future 
possibilities  has  often  seemed  to  warrant  the 
hope  that  an  institution  of  learning  about  to 
be  planted  would  ultimately  become,  in  the 
12 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 

proper  and  fullest  meaning  of  the  word,  a 
university.  In  some  instances  the  hope  has 
been  fulfilled  in  accomplishment.  In  nu- 
merous other  instances  later  generations  have 
realized  that  their  forefathers  had  laid  insti- 
tutional foundations  in  a  fabric  of  dreams 
which  in  the  light  of  after  developments 
could  not  possibly  find  a  superstructure  of 
substance. 

Here  and  there  in  our  history  have  been 
found  conservatives  who  have  laid  in  mod- 
esty the  foundations  of  a  college.  That  cir- 
cumstances they  were  unable  to  foresee  have 
pushed  their  college  forward  into  the  larger 
proportions  of  a  university  is  not  to  be 
charged  against  them  as  due  to  narrow- 
mindedness  or  shortsightedness.  Without 
the  gift  of  prophecy  it  were  impossible,  in  a 
developing  civilization,  to  predict  with  cer- 
tainty the  magnitude  an  institution  would 
assume.  Often  has  the  small  planting  be- 
come the  large  fruition. 

All  things  considered,  it  would  hardly  be 
wise,  at  this  time,  to  yield  to  the  demand 
coming  from  many  quarters  for  change  of 
13 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

titles.  It  is  an  easy  matter  to  broaden  the 
name  of  college  into  the  more  appropriate 
one  of  nniversity.  It  is  almost  impossible 
to  compress  the  name  university,  long  worn 
by  an  institution,  into  that  of  college.  To 
attempt  to  rename  all  the  educational  insti- 
tutions of  the  land  so  that  each  shall  be 
known  for  what  it  is  by  the  appellation  it 
bears,  would  be  an  undertaking  beset  with 
many  just  objections.  When  graduates  of  the 
years  come  back,  at  convenient  seasons,  and 
when  they  assemble  in  alumni  gatherings, 
they  are  happy  in  taking  on  their  lips  the 
name  of  Alma  Mater  that  became  precious 
during  the  care-free  period  of  student  life. 
Why  break  the  heartstrings  of  thousands  of 
college  folk  by  substituting  a  strange  title 
for  one  that  has  become  sacred  through  years 
of  the  sweetest  associations  the  earth  holds? 
Then,  too,  it  may  afterwhile  be  necessary 
to  change  back  again.  If  the  past  may  be 
accepted  in  any  way  as  a  gauge  for  the  fu- 
ture, the  institution  that  is  small  and  insig- 
nificant to-day  may  become  large  and  in- 
fluential to-morrow.  Let  the  institutions 
14 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 

called  colleges,  if  development  warrant  it, 
change  their  names  to  university,  but  let 
those  colleges  which  in  hnman  unwisdom 
have  been  called  university  retain  the  title 
to  the  comfort  of  alumni  while  they  hope  for 
a  greater  to-morrow — only,  though  granting 
this,  let  us  determine  the  distinction  between 
the  university  and  the  college  regardless  of 
the  name  borne,  if  perchance  we  may  re- 
alize in  America  the  advantages  that  are  to 
be  found  only  in  The  Real  College. 

A  careful  study  of  the  origin  of  institu- 
tions of  higher  learning  will  reveal  the  fact 
that,  in  the  very  beginning  of  its  existence, 
the  university  was  an  institution  for  ad- 
vanced study.  Charles  the  Great,  ignorant, 
but  eager  for  learning,  is  entitled  to  the 
gratitude  of  the  generations  as  the  inspired 
originator  of  higher  education.  This  mighty 
founder  of  empire  has  sent  a  succession  of 
distinguished  teachers  down  from  the  day 
of  Alcuin,  for  in  the  great  abbey  schoolroom 
of  St.  Martin,  at  Tours,  is  found  the  nucleus 
of  the  teaching  from  which  the  university 
took  its  rise. 

15 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

As  an  institution  organized  and  tangible, 
the  university  in  the  earliest  stage  of  its  de- 
velopment was  simply  a  scholastic  guild  or 
group  of  scholars  and  teachers  bound  to- 
gether like  a  trades-guild  for  the  purpose  of 
investigating  the  more  intricate  intellectual 
and  spiritual  problems.  The  purpose  of  the 
founding  of  the  University  of  Salerno,  the 
first  in  Europe,  confirms  the  statement  that 
the  university  was  an  institution  for  the  ad- 
vanced work  of  masters,  and  not  for  the 
making  of  bachelors.  It  existed  in  the  first 
place  as  a  School  of  Medicine.  Like  Salerno, 
all  the  earlier  universities  found  their  origin 
to  a  great  extent  in  endeavors  to  obtain  and 
provide  instruction  of  a  kind  beyond  the 
range  of  the  monastic  and  cathedral  schools. 
It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  precedent  makes 
the  university  an  institution  for  the  advanced 
research  and  investigations  of  graduate  stu- 
dents. It  is  true  that  a  multiplication  of  in- 
dependent colleges  united  in  a  community 
with  a  centralized  government  in  certain 
agreed  matters,  as  at  Cambridge  and  Ox- 
ford, has  somewhat  modified  the  original 
16 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 

European  conception  of  a  university.  Not- 
withstanding this  modification  the  university 
remains,  in  the  essential  purpose  of  its  ex- 
istence, an  institution  for  advanced  graduate, 
technical,  or  professional  study.  This  ideal 
of  the  purpose  of  the  university  has  been 
taking  root  in  America  in  recent  years. 
Though  there  are  those  in  high  educational 
places  who  demand  a  process  of  exclusion, 
there  are  others  equally  prominent  who  de- 
mand an  all-inclusiveness  of  the  educational 
endeavor  in  order  that  we  may  realize,  on 
the  new  Continent,  the  perfect  university  of 
the  world. 

At  the  annual  meeting  of  the  National 
Association  of  State  University  Presidents, 
at  Baton  Eouge,  Louisiana,  in  November, 
1906,  President  George  E.  MacLean,  of 
the  State  University  of  Iowa,  as  chair- 
man of  a  committee  appointed  at  a  pre- 
vious meeting  to  present  a  definition  of 
a  university  for  interpretation  of  member- 
ship rights  in  the  Association,  and  to  fur- 
nish an  ideal  to  which  all  universities  should 
aspire,  announced  that  he  had  been  unable 
2  17 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

to  secure  an  agreement  with  his  colleagues 
on  the  committee,  the  Presidents  of  the  Uni- 
versities of  Illinois  and  Vermont.  Despair- 
ing of  any  concert  of  action  by  the  members 
of  the  committee,  he  presented  as  his  own 
conception  of  the  character  of  institution 
necessary  for  recognition  by  the  National 
Association  of  State  Universities  the  follow- 
ing statement : 

"Without  attempting  definitions,  we  be- 
lieve that  while  a  university  may  be,  in  the 
words  of  a  distinguished  member  of  this 
Committee,  'a  complex  of  colleges,'  it  is 
essentially  much  more  than  that.  It  should 
give  a  liberal  education  and  prepare  practi- 
tioners for  the  various  professions,  but  its 
keynote,  in  addition  to  the  liberalization  of 
the  mind,  must  be  the  spirit  of  specializa- 
tion, research,  and  discovery  of  new  truths 
and  new  applications  of  old  truths,  and  the 
diffusion  of  knowledge,  particularly  in  the 
institutions  we  represent,  in  the  service  of 
the  State  and  Nation. 

In  gross,  therefore,  we  recommend  as 
standards  at  this  date,  for  an  institution  to 
be  recommended  as  a  standard  American 
university : 

18 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 

1.  A  university  giving  the  Degree  of 
Doctor  of  Philosophy  or  Doctor  of  Science, 
after  three  years  of  graduate  study  in  resi- 
dence, one  of  which  shall  be  at  the  institu- 
tion conferring  the  degree; 

2.  A  university  that  requires,  in  addition 
to  the  points  named  in  graduate  study,  that 
a  candidate  before  receiving  his  higher  de- 
gree shall  have  completed  for  his  Bachelor's 
Degree  a  course  of  not  less  than  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  semester  hours  in  subjects 
distributed  with  reasonable  sequences,  and 
preliminary  requirements  among  the  great 
groups  of  subjects,  ordinarily  recognized  in 
the  field  of  liberal  arts,  as  languages  and 
literature,  philosophical  and  historical  sci- 
ences, material  sciences  and  the  fine  arts." 

President  Edmund  Janes  James,  of  the 
University  of  Illinois,  the  only  other  mem- 
ber of  the  committee  present  took  issue  with 
President  MacLean,  contending  that  in  this 
progressive  day  the  universities  were  grow- 
ing too  rapidly,  and  to  serve  the  larger  in- 
terests expected  of  a  university  they  must, 
in  the  near  future,  be  relieved  by  the  high 
schools  and  small  colleges  of  at  least  the 
first  two  years  of  the  college  course.     If 

19 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

President  James  is  right — and  there  are 
many  who  share  his  views — it  would  seem 
that  we  are  likely  in  the  United  States,  be- 
fore long,  to  be  driven  back  to  a  realization 
of  the  original  European  conception  of  the 
university. 

A  university  may  continue  to  maintain 
one  or  more  undergraduate  colleges,  but 
even  now  it  is  generally  admitted  that  the 
prime  object  of  its  existence  is  to  serve  so- 
ciety by  solving  the  larger  problems,  the  an- 
swers to  which  are  essential  to  the  welfare 
of  humankind.  It  is  certain  that  increasing 
demand  for  skilled  labor  and  trained  experts 
will  compel  the  university  of  the  future  to 
assume  this  character. 

The  day  is  past  when  a  man  can  engage 
in  a  commercial  career  without  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  scientific  principles  upon 
which  all  sound  business  achievement  must 
rest.  The  Tuck  School  of  Finance,  at  Dart- 
mouth College — and  by  the  way,  Dartmouth 
is  one  of  the  so-called  colleges  which  on  ac- 
count of  the  number  of  students  and  the  scope 
of  its  work  now  fairly  belongs  to  the  univer- 
20 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 

sity  class — the  Wharton  School  of  Commerce 
at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  the 
School  of  Commerce  at  the  University  of 
Wisconsin,  are  a  response  to  the  modern  de- 
mand for  trained  men  of  affairs  and  are 
augnry  of  a  not  far  distant  day  when  all 
universities  will  have  Graduate  Schools  of 
Business,  taking  equal  rank  with  Schools  of 
Law,  Medicine,  Theology,  and  Engineering. 
Clearly,  then,  there  must  be  an  institution 
that  will  carry  youth-hood  forward  from  the 
work  completed  in  the  high  school  to  the 
point  of  maturity  and  knowledge  which  will 
find  him  prepared  for  the  specialization  of 
the  graduate  college  in  the  university. 

The  institution  which  fills  this  gap  is  the 
college,  and  that  it  has  been  a  most  impor- 
tant institution  in  our  educational  system  is 
evidenced  by  past  accomplishment  in  the 
production  of  men  and  women  of  cultured 
lives  and  effective  service.  It  will  continue 
to  be  an  indispensable  feature  of  our  edu- 
cational work  so  long  as  the  humanities  are 
of  interest  to  men  and  so  long  as  a  good 
foundation  is  a  recognized  necessity  for  a 
21 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

superstructure  of  specialization.  Only  a  few 
years  ago  the  friends  of  the  American  col- 
lege were  panic-stricken  by  the  fear  that  the 
institution  of  their  affection  was  about  to 
be  obliterated.  The  greatest  college  presi- 
dent in  the  country  inaugurated  the  move- 
ment for  the  abolition  of  the  time-honored 
four-year  college  course  and  the  substitution 
therefor  of  a  three-years'  course,  including, 
however,  as  much  work  as  had  previously 
been  done  in  four  years.  Not  to  be  outdone 
in  progressive  theories  of  education,  a  prom- 
inent metropolitan  university  president  in 
the  East  soon  followed  by  insisting  that  a 
two-years'  course  between  the  high  school 
and  the  professional  school  of  the  university 
was  sufficient.  Following  hard  on  the  heels 
of  this  declaration  came  a  pronunciamento 
from  the  distinguished  president  of  a  metro- 
politan university  in  the  Middle  West  de- 
manding that  two  years  be  added  to  the  four- 
year  courses  now  given  in  the  average  public 
high  school.  Is  it  any  wonder,  in  the  light 
of  these  proclamations  emanating  from  rec- 
ognized authorities  in  higher  education,  that 
22 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 

the  friends  of  the  college  became  apprehen- 
sive? The  institution  of  their  love  seemed 
marching  to  a  certain  doom. 

The  college  still  lives,  however,  and  if  it 
is  ever  changed  in  character  the  change  is 
more  likely  to  occur  on  the  lines  suggested 
by  President  James  than  otherwise.  The 
high  schools  may  become  colleges  in  the 
scope  of  their  work  in  some  future  day,  and 
if  that  day  arrives  it  will  come  bringing  the 
same  problems  that  now  confront  the  col- 
leges. Undergraduate  colleges  may  continue, 
doubtless  will  continue  indefinitely,  as  at- 
tached features  of  a  university  system,  and 
the  college  existing  in  the  university  has 
many  of  the  same  problems  to  solve  which 
belong  to  the  college  in  detachment. 

A  college,  as  an  advanced  grade  of  the 
high  school  or  as  an  inferior  department  of 
a  university,  will  always,  by  reason  of  the 
age  or  stage  of  maturity  of  its  students  and 
the  character  of  its  work,  have  a  distinct 
quality  calling  for  the  observance  of  par- 
ticular forms  and  the  realization  of  certain 
ideals  therein. 

23 


THE  KEAL  COLLEGE 

It  is  because  of  the  fact  that  years  of 
existence  have  established  traditions  and 
customs  found  only  in  isolation,  that  we  shall 
assume  for  our  present  purpose  that  the  in- 
dependent institution  performing  the  func- 
tions required  between  the  high  school  and 
the  university,  whether  it  be  properly  called 
college,  or  miscalled  university,  is  the  type 
of  the  real  college. 

The  real  college  is  not  an  academy, 
neither  is  it  a  graduate  or  professional 
school.  It  need  hardly  be  said  that  a  school 
for  the  teaching  of  Bookkeeping,  Banking, 
Commercial  Forms,  and  Stenography,  guar- 
anteeing a  completed  course  and  fitness  for 
a  good-salaried  position  after  six  months  of 
training,  though  often  bearing  the  preten- 
tious name  of  college,  is  not  a  college.  A 
technical  school,  giving  undergraduate  work 
in  Mechanics,  Engineering,  Ceramics,  or  the 
Applied  Sciences,  even  though  it  offer  strong 
and  thoroughly  useful  courses  extending 
through  a  number  of  years,  is  not,  accord- 
ing to  the  accepted  conception,  a  college. 
The  real  college  bridges  the  chasm  between 
24 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE  DEFINED 

the  high  school  or  academy  and  the  uni- 
versity or  professional  school.  Its  mis- 
sion is  not  to  prepare  directly  for  business 
or  profession.  It  does  prepare  for  life.  It 
presents  the  humanities.  It  introduces  the 
student  to  Philosophy  and  Literature,  and 
grounds  him  in  Linguistics  and  the  Pure 
Sciences.  The  real  college  drills  the  stu- 
dent in  subjects  that  he  may  never  use  in 
his  life's  vocation.  It  may  grant  the  privi- 
lege of  electing  certain  studies  that  look  to- 
ward a  particular  calling  in  later  years ;  but 
these  studies  are,  at  best,  only  a  basis  for 
the  practical  studies  that  are  later  to  follow 
them. 

The  college  is  a  foundation  builder.  It 
seeks  to  establish  the  youth  in  body,  intel- 
lect, and  moral  character  so  strongly  that  he 
will  be  well  prepared  in  due  season,  with 
large  vision  and  lofty  ideals,  for  the  suc- 
cessful undertaking  of  special  training.  The 
real  college  is  a  school  of  discipline  and  cul- 
ture. The  men  and  women  of  America  who 
have  lived  the  larger  life,  who  have  won  the 
greater  success,  and  who  have  rendered  the 
25 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

better  service  as  a  result  of  the  ideals,  dis- 
cipline, and  culture  of  the  undergraduate  pe- 
riod, are  satisfactory  proofs  that  their  time 
was  not  misspent,  and  they  abundantly  vin- 
dicate the  importance  to  civilization  of  the 
real  college. 


26 


THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL 
COLLEGE 


THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL 
COLLEGE 

The  Man  at  the  Wheel  is  indispensable. 
To  attempt  to  direct  an  educational  institu- 
tion without  a  capable  head  is  as  an  attempt 
to  run  a  ship  without  a  pilot.  The  Univer- 
sity of  Virginia  tried  it  for  seventy  years 
and  more,  and  then  acknowledged  that  the 
prolonged  experiment  was  unsatisfactory. 
The  University  of  Cincinnati  reached  the 
same  conclusion  much  earlier  in  its  history. 

It  was  in  deference  to  the  expressed  wish 
of  Thomas  Jefferson,  the  founder,  for  an 
academic  community  thoroughly  democratic 
that  the  University  of  Virginia  adopted  the 
policy  of  handing  the  executive  business 
about  in  rotation  from  year  to  year  to  a  fac- 
ulty chairman.  By  directing  inquiries  to 
those  connected  with  the  institution  just 
named,  persons  interested  may  easily  secure 
decided  opinions  on  the  practical  workings  of 
29 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

this  plan.  The  fact,  though,  that  the  Univer- 
sity of  Virginia  now  has  a  president  as  its 
permanent  head  is  doubtless  the  best  evidence 
that  the  original  policy  was  found  unsatisfac- 
tory. We  are  warranted,  too,  now  that  the 
University  of  Cincinnati  boasts  a  president,  in 
drawing  similar  conclusions  concerning  that 
institution.  Other  colleges  have  tried  the  ex- 
periment of  a  headless  directing  body  and 
have  sooner  or  later  pronounced  the  plan  im- 
practical. There  is  universal  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  need  of  a  managing  head  for 
every  enterprise  of  importance.  The  real 
college  is  an  important  enterprise.  Such  a 
college  must  have  a  responsible  head.  He 
may  be  called  chancellor,  governor,  master, 
director,  or  president.  The  name  does  not 
alter  the  main  requirements  of  the  position. 
In  America  the  executive  and  administrative 
head  of  the  college  commonly  answers  to 
the  title  of  president. 

The  president  of  the  real  college  is  a  per- 
son of  manifold  duties.    His  obligations  are 
varied.     He  sustains  relations  to  the  gen- 
eral public,  to  his  board  of  trustees,  to  his 
30 


PEESIDENT  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

faculty,  to  his  alumni,  to  his  patrons,  and, 
most  vital  of  all,  to  his  students. 

The  college  president  of  the  middle  nine- 
teenth century  had  a  well-beaten  path  lead- 
ing from  his  study  to  his  classroom.  He  be- 
longed to  the  college  alone.  The  public  had 
no  claims  upon  him.  Not  so  to-day.  One 
of  the  most  eloquent  orators  of  the  South 
less  than  five  years  ago  declared  that  his 
life,  while  generally  regarded  as  successful, 
was  to  him  in  a  measure  a  disappointment. 
It  was  a  matter  of  regret  to  him,  he  said, 
that  he  could  not  have  been  a  college  presi- 
dent, so  that  he  might  have  lived  a  life  of 
literary  ease  with  the  books  of  his  library, 
unvexed  by  the  harassing  anxieties  of  the 
busy  outside  world.  The  college  president 
who  listened  to  this  expressed  conception  of 
his  care-free  existence  smiled  sadly  as  he 
thought  of  the  great  gulf  that  lay  fixed  be- 
tween the  ideal  and  the  real.  In  delivering 
the  charge  to  bis  successor  at  the  Prince- 
ton installation  ceremonies  in  October,  1902, 
President  Patton  said,  in  substance,  to  Pres- 
ident-elect Wilson:  "It  may  be  pleasant,  in 
31 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

your  new  position,  to  recall  that  you  once 
had  the  tastes  and  inclinations  of  a  scholar, 
but  it  will  be  only  a  recollection. ' '  No  edu- 
cational institution  in  our  day  can  long  sus- 
tain itself  unless  its  claims  are  unceasingly 
pressed  upon  the  public.  The  college  serves 
its  students  first,  of  course,  but  it  is  re- 
stricted to  the  point  of  approximate  ineffi- 
ciency if  its  service  ends  there.  The  college 
has  not  done  half  its  work  unless  it  carries  its 
ideals  away  out  beyond  college  halls — unless 
it  lends  itself  to  the  solution  of  the  great 
problems  of  humanity.  The  real  college 
should  serve  Society,  Church,  and  State, 
and  the  college  president  must  project  the 
influence  of  his  institution  as  far  as  may  be 
out  into  the  practical  affairs  of  men. 

The  college,  to  grow  and  to  serve  hu- 
manity, with  a  constantly  increasing  effec- 
tiveness, must  have  money,  and  money  never 
comes  without  the  asking.  The  college  pres- 
ident must  know  how  to  ask  in  such  a  way 
that  he  will  receive.  One  of  his  chiefest 
duties,  in  relation  to  the  public,  is  that  of 
a  money-getter.  If  the  institution  is  sup- 
32 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

ported  by  the  State,  he  must  needs  be  skilled 
in  the  art  of  approaching  leglislators  in  the 
way  that  will  most  surely  bring  ample  ap- 
propriations for  buildings,  improvements, 
and  maintenance.  In  this  work,  happy 
would  the  college  be,  and  happier  its  presi- 
dent, if  he  could  be  relieved  from  the  re- 
sponsibility of  pressing  its  claims.  It  is  un- 
seemly for  one  charged  with  the  dignity  of 
educational  administration  to  appear  in  the 
role  of  a  lobbyist,  as  a  suppliant,  knock- 
ing at  the  doors  of  legislative  halls.  If 
trustees  would  assume  the  duty  of  secur- 
ing the  appropriations  for  the  support  of 
our  State  colleges  and  universities,  the  pub- 
lic would  be  spared  the  spectacle  of  edu- 
cators mingling  with  clamorous  sycophants, 
and  the  presidents  of  these  institutions 
would  be  spared  the  humiliation  of  a  dis- 
credited classification.  Trustees,  however, 
are  usually  active  business  or  professional 
men  and  can  promise  little  more  than  sup- 
port, while  they  look  to  their  president  to 
see  to  it  that  the  legislature  supplies  insti- 
tutional needs.  If  the  president  fails  in  this 
3  33 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

work  he  is  usually  regarded  as  a  general 
failure.  Excellence  in  other  lines  will  not 
compensate  for  lack  of  ability  to  secure  the 
needed  financial  support.  The  best  that  can 
be  done  under  present  conditions,  in  all  the 
effort  necessary  to  get  money,  is  for  the 
president  to  maintain  a  bearing  in  harmony 
with  the  exalted  work  of  one  charged  with 
a  right  example  to  youthhood.  Legislators 
respect  the  man  who  does  not  forget  the  ob- 
ligations of  his  calling.  They  do  not  want 
educators  to  descend  to  the  level  of  the  pro- 
fessional lobbyist.  The  college  president 
who  tries  to  play  the  politician  by  being  a 
good  fellow  may  win  favor  with  the  few,  but 
with  the  majority  he  meets  the  failure  that 
contempt  always  presents  to  its  object.  To 
drink  and  smoke  and  entertain  lavishly  may 
not  be  considered  inappropriate  when  it  is 
done  by  a  railroad  attorney  seeking  favor- 
able legislation,  but  any  such  conduct  is  al- 
most universally  recognized  as  an  incongru- 
ity when  used  by  a  college  president  to  win 
favor.  As  the  majority  of  our  American  law- 
makers are  men  of  sturdy  common-sense  and 
34 


PEESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

high  ideals  of  character,  they  have  little  re- 
spect for  an  exemplar  who  does  not  every- 
where exemplify.  It  is  argument — facts  at- 
tractively presented — that  wins  legislative 
support  for  colleges.  The  president  of  a 
State  college  who  knows  how  to  approach 
men  skillfully  but  honestly,  and  who  believes 
in  his  cause,  will  find  a  sympathetic  response 
from  the  friends  of  public  education  in  legis- 
lative halls. 

The  president  of  a  Church  college  who 
succeeds  is  a  professional  beggar.  To  allow 
any  fine  conception  of  modesty  to  restrain 
him  from  asking  any  living  person  for  money 
would  be  to  spell  out  for  him  the  words  of 
his  own  failure  in  the  service  he  should  ren- 
der his  institution.  For  the  executive  of  a 
Church-supported  institution  there  is  no  sur- 
cease of  toil  from  the  morning  of  the  day  of 
his  installation  to  the  evening  of  his  effective 
resignation.  He  must  have  well  in  hand  the 
details  of  institutional  work,  he  must  be  con- 
stant in  the  service  of  his  students  and  fac- 
ulty, while  he  seizes  every  possible  odd  mo- 
ment to  make  personal  solicitation  for  build- 

35 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

ing  and  endowment  funds.  His  crowded 
week-days  are  crowned  by  Sabbaths  that 
know  no  rest,  for  educational  sermons  and 
lectures  in  every  possible  pulpit  are  an  in- 
dispensable preliminary  to  generous  educa- 
tional collections. 

In  the  matter  of  securing  added  financial 
support  the  president  of  a  non-sectarian  in- 
stitution maintained  on  private  endowments 
bears  the  same  responsibility  that  rests  upon 
the  shoulders  of  his  brother  executive  in  the 
Church  college.  The  commercialization  of 
the  college  presidency  is  one  of  the  lament- 
able facts  of  latter-day  academic  policy. 

It  is  notorious  that  trustee  boards  of  cer- 
tain institutions  in  recent  years  have  made 
scholarship,  literary  influence,  and  command- 
ing character  secondary  considerations,  and 
in  the  last  analysis  their  choice  of  a  college 
president  has  been  governed  by  his  ability  to 
control  a  financial  following. 

High-minded  people  who  would  not  think 
of  disparaging  the  particular  qualities  neces- 
sary for  a  bank  president,  a  corporation  man- 
ager, or  a  railroad  director,  must  be  par- 
36 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

doned  if  they  dare  to  believe  that  certain  ad- 
ditional talents  and  attainments  are  requi- 
site to  the  realization  of  the  true  college 
president.  Sad  the  day  for  the  student 
when,  looking  for  a  lofty  ideal,  he  finds  in 
the  president  of  his  college  nothing  better 
than  expert  ability  to  multiply  shekels.  The 
young  person  fronting  the  future  has  a  right 
to  expect  that  somewhere  ahead  the  hidden 
years  have  in  their  keeping  a  gift  more 
priceless  than  material  treasure.  Buoyant 
youth  will  be  incited  to  loftiest  endeavor  only 
under  the  inspiring  charm  of  a  big  mind  and 
a  great  heart. 

The  president  of  the  real  college  will  un- 
derstand, if  his  institution  is  to  hold  a  re- 
spectable position  in  the  republic  of  letters, 
that  he  has  resting  upon  him  an  obligation 
for  authorship.  To  write  poorly  for  the 
public  prints  would  be  to  reflect  discredit 
upon  the  interests  with  which  he  has  con- 
nection. To  write  on  lines  of  scientific  spe- 
cialization with  which  he  is  not  immediately 
connected,  or  to  attempt  to  treat  those  sub- 
jects in  which  his  knowledge  is  not  fresh, 
37 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

would  be  exhibition  of  a  vain  presumption 
that  even  his  position  could  not  excuse.  The 
real  college  president  is  ever  pursued  by  the 
fear  that  administrative  duties  will  rob  him 
of  scholarly  tastes  and  reputation,  and  to 
avoid  this  fate  he  hastens,  in  some  instances, 
to  repel  it  by  discussing  questions  with  which 
he  has  not,  and  is  not  expected  to  have,  ac- 
quaintance. 

Presidential  duties  undoubtedly  will  re- 
quire abandonment  of  reading  and  research 
on  the  special  lines  that  absorb  the  interest 
of  the  professor  in  the  college  chair.  It 
ought  to  be  recognized,  however,  that  admin- 
istration is  a  line  of  specialization  as  emi- 
nently respectable  as  Philosophy  or  Eco- 
nomics or  Chemistry  or  Mathematics  or  Lin- 
guistics. The  college  president  who  devotes 
himself  with  the  scholar's  interest  to  the 
study  of  curricula,  to  problems  of  organiza- 
tion and  government,  and  to  the  develop- 
ment of  plans  for  effective  institutional 
service,  will  be  able  to  write  as  an  author- 
ity, and  his  deliverances  will  be  accepted  as 
the  product  of  scholarship. 
38 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

The  real  college  president,  though,  will 
not  have  met,  to  the  full,  the  requirements 
of  his  station  when  he  has  done  his  best  as 
financier  and  author.  His  obligation  of  office 
demands  that  he  carry  the  influence  of  his 
institution  as  far  as  possible  by  word  of 
mouth.  The  day  of  enchanting  eloquence 
and  persuasive  argument  is  not  past.  Occa- 
sionally it  is  said,  and  usually  by  those  who 
are  not  effective  in  public  utterance,  that  the 
multiplicity  of  newspapers  and  magazines  in 
our  modern  day  has  made  the  platform  ob- 
solete. It-  is  repeatedly  averred  that  the  or- 
ator is  no  longer  a  potent  factor  in  the  de- 
liberations of  men.  Doubtless  it  is  true  that 
the  man  endowed  with  gifts  of  tongues  shares 
the  privilege  of  molding  thought  with  other 
forces,  as  he  did  not  do  when  Demosthenes 
hurled  his  phillipics  and  Cicero  convicted  by 
the  force  of  his  relentless  logic.  The  other 
thing,  though,  is  also  true,  namely,  that  so 
long  as  a  warm  personality  has  attractive 
power,  that  long  will  the  word  spoken  by 
the  living  man  wield  an  influence  beyond 
that  of  the  lifeless  composition.  The  after- 
39 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

dinner  speaker  was  never  more  in  demand 
than  to-day,  and  the  applause  given  to  his 
utterances  and  the  editorial  comment  upon 
his  ideas  are  proof  sufficient  that  his  speech 
arouses  thought.  Political  campaigns  have 
not  yet  found  a  satisfactory  substitute  for 
the  stump.  The  brief  does  not  reach  the 
jury  as  effectively  as  the  oral  pleadings  of 
the  attorney.  Hundreds  find  their  way  with 
the  returning  Sabbaths  to  the  churches  where 
gifted  preachers  proclaim  God's  everlasting 
truth,  and  the  galleries  of  congressional 
halls  will  not  begin  to  contain  the  multitudes 
anxious  to  hear  the  representatives  of  the 
people  on  living  questions.  It  is  as  an  ef- 
fective public  speaker  that  the  college  pres- 
ident can  do  great  service  for  his  institu- 
tion. If  the  strength  of  his  personality  is 
made  apparent  through  his  spoken  words  in 
pulpit,  in  club,  on  platform,  or  in  banquet- 
hall,  parents  find  themselves  longing  to  have 
their  children  under  his  influence,  and  he 
touches  an  hundred  responsive  chords  that 
will  become  vibrant  with  praise  for  his 
college. 

40 


PBESIDENT  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

A  reputation  is  of  little  value  to  a  col- 
lege president.  It  may  attract  an  initial 
crowd,  but  it  is  valueless  unless  its  possessor 
wins  the  crowd.  Men  in  some  vocations  can 
afford  an  occasional,  partial,  or  complete 
failure  in  a  public  effort.  The  college  presi- 
dent must  never  fail.  As  a  rule  his  every 
appearance  is  before  a  new  company,  and 
his  institution  is,  in  his  attitudes  and  every 
word,  always  on  trial.  To  do  poorly  is 
not  only  to  hurt  himself,  but,  through  him- 
self, to  do  injury  to  all  those  interests  for 
which  he  stands  sponsor.  If,  then,  he  is  to 
be  a  fit  representative  of  the  spirit  of  the  in- 
stitution in  the  service  it  renders  to  the  pub- 
lic beyond  his  college  halls,  his  obligation  for 
close  study  and  serious  thinking  is  heavy  in- 
deed. To  assume  that  preparation  is  unnec- 
essary for  even  one  public  duty  would  be  to 
entertain  a  delusion  fraught  with  possibili- 
ties fatal  to  his  sacred  trust. 

After  all,  though,  it  is  well  to  bear  in 

mind   that   the  duty  the  president  of  the 

real  college  bears  to  the  outside  world  is, 

at  most,  only  adventitious.     If  it  were  not 

41 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

for  his  position  at  home  he  would  have  none 
of  these  incidental  functions  away  from 
home.  It  is  therefore  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance that  he  have  a  proper  conception  of 
his  part  at  the  center  from  whence  reach  out 
all  his  possibilities  of  service.  He  has  first 
an  executive  obligation  to  his  board  of  trus- 
tees. If  this  body  has  been  moved  by  the 
highest  academic  ideals  in  electing  a  presi- 
dent, his  board  will  expect  him  to  be  their 
capable  adviser  in  all  that  has  to  do  with  in- 
stitutional welfare.  "When  trustees  gather 
once  or  twice  a  year,  for  a  day  or  two,  or 
maybe  for  a  few  brief  hours,  dropping  for 
the  time  all  thought  of  their  multitudinous 
business  or  professional  cares  to  consider 
the  well-being  of  their  college,  they  have  a 
right  to  expect  that  their  president  will  have 
its  affairs  so  well  in  hand  that  they  may 
readily  understand  the  exact  uses  to  which 
the  resources  have  been  put,  so  that  they 
may  be  intelligently  and  willingly  led  to  an 
approval  of  his  larger  future  plans.  When 
trustees  commence  to  entertain  doubts  as  to 
the  well-balanced  judgment  or  the  clear- 
42 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

seeing  vision  of  their  executive  and  coun- 
selor, the  beginning  of  the  end  of  his  use- 
fulness in  that  relationship  will  have  come. 
Time  was  when  boards  of  trustees  not 
only  chose  the  president  and  faculty  of  the 
college,  but  as  well  prescribed  the  curricu- 
lum and  adopted  the  text-books.  That  day 
has  some  time  since  passed  into  history.  It 
was  almost  pathetic  at  a  recent  Commence- 
ment of  one  of  our  ancient  and  honorable 
institutions  to  hear  a  good  trustee  lament- 
ing that  the  committee  on  course  of  study, 
of  which  he  was  chairman,  had  had  nothing 
to  do  in  recent  years.  He  was  a  good  man, 
but  his  work  as  trustee  had  begun  when  col- 
lege presidents  and  professors  were  only 
hirelings.  He  had  not  awakened  to  a  reali- 
zation of  the  new  order  of  things  which  rec- 
ognizes that  curricula  and  college  govern- 
ment in  general  are  the  products  of  experts. 
Neither  had  he  realized  that  certain  com- 
mittees exist  only  to  give  appointments  to 
members  not  otherwise  provided  for,  and 
that  others  are  perpetuated,  like  the  snuff- 
box in  the  United  States  Senate,  as  a  cour- 

43 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

teous  tribute  to  the  barbarous  times  which 
once  were  but  are  no  more. 

He  did  not  know  that  no  self-respecting 
college  president  in  the  new  age  would  sub- 
mit for  one  moment  to  the  suggestion  that 
matters  purely  academic  should  be  taken 
from  his  faculty  of  trained  experts  and  com- 
mitted to  his  board  of  trustees  efficient  in 
business  policies  but  thoroughly  unfamiliar 
with  modern  college  standards.  We  do  not 
want  in  America  the  conservative  tyranny 
of  the  Oxford  congregation.  When  the  con- 
vocation, which  is  composed  of  representa- 
tives of  the  various  colleges  of  Oxford  Uni- 
versity and  which  constitutes  the  governing 
body  of  the  larger  institution,  resolved  to  fol- 
low the  lead  of  American  colleges  in  making 
Greek  an  elective  study,  the  congregation, 
composed  of  all  the  doctors  and  masters  of 
the  university,  many  of  whom  are  curates, 
vicars,  and  professionals,  so  far  removed 
from  modern  academic  thought  that  they 
might  almost  as  well  belong  to  the  class  that 
is  without  a  diploma,  exercised  its  guaran- 
teed prerogative  of  veto,  from  which  there 
44 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

is  no  appeal,  and  Greek  remains  compulsory 
at  Oxford.  Even  these,  who  believe  in  the 
indispensable  culture  value  of  Greek,  and 
they  are  many,  deplore  the  arbitrary  exer- 
cise of  an  authority  that  is  out  of  harmony 
with  modern  ideas  of  college  direction. 

The  writer  was  interested  recently  in 
poring  over  the  well-written  Minutes  of  one 
of  the  oldest  and  best  of  our  American  col- 
leges. As  late  as  1870  he  read  that  the  board 
of  trustees  was  called  to  order,  and  after 
prayer  that  a  committee  was  appointed  to 
notify  the  president  of  the  institution  that 
the  board  was  in  session  and  ready  to  hear 
any  communication  he  might  have  to  make. 
"In  due  season  the  committee  re-appeared, 
escorting  the  president,  who  presented  his 
annual  report  and  then  was  requested  to  re- 
tire." Such  action  is  unthinkable  in  this 
enlightened  day,  when  every  college  presi- 
dent is  ex-ofjicio  a  member  of  his  board  of 
trustees  and  when  the  governing  body  would 
not  presume  to  take  any  serious  action  with- 
out his  presence.  The  latter-day  board  of 
trustees  relies  upon  the  president  of  the  real 
45 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

college  to  devise  systems  of  bookkeeping  and 
filing  so  that  the  financial  transactions  of  the 
institution  are  easily  known  and  so  that  the 
registrar  may  give  accurate  information  at 
a  moment's  notice.  He  must,  by  up-to-date 
business  methods,  make  all  the  records  of 
the  institution  permanent,  comprehensive, 
and  intelligible.  He  is  expected  to  be  states- 
man-like in  his  administration  and  to  pro- 
pose for  the  acceptance  of  his  board  plans 
for  future  development  that  will  command 
enthusiastic  support.  If  new  buildings  are 
to  be  erected  he  will  know  what  they  ought 
to  be  and  where  they  should  be.  The  sad- 
dest spectacle  in  American  college-making  is 
not  the  wretched  architecture  of  our  build- 
ings, cheap  as  that  is  in  poor  imitation  of 
European  models.  The  most  pitiable  thing 
in  the  history  of  academic  control  of  our 
country  is  the  incongruous  and  unsightly  ar- 
rangement of  our  college  buildings.  In  most 
institutions,  when  enough  money  has  been 
gathered  together  for  a  new  structure  of  any 
character,  the  trustees  have  adjourned  for 
a  few  minutes  to  walk  about  the  campus,  and 
46 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

after  a  half -hour's  thought,  on  reassembling, 
they  vote  a  location  for  the  new  building  as 
though  it  were  the  last  one  that  would  ever 
have  a  place  on  the  grounds.  The  mistakes 
of  the  past  are  beyond  recall,  for  poorly  re- 
lated structures  and  ugly  groupings  are  even 
to  be  preferred  to  the  destruction  of  build- 
ings around  which  loving  traditions  cluster 
and  which  lend  the  indispensable  effect  of 
impressive  antiquity.  In  recent  years, 
though,  there  has  been  an  awakening  to  the 
importance  of  building  locations,  and  the 
president  is  indeed  behind  the  times  who 
does  not  give  careful  study  to  the  placing  of 
every  new  edifice,  that  he  may  direct  his 
board  aright  when  the  hour  arrives  for  final 
action.  If  he  is  wise,  one  of  the  first  acts  of 
his  administration  will  be  to  recommend  the 
employment  of  a  competent  landscape  gar- 
dener. Under  his  direction  this  expert  will 
prepare  a  plan  of  building  groupings.  This 
scheme  will  be  made  with  the  end  in  view 
of  relating  buildings  to  their  uses  in  such  a 
way  as  to  produce  an  effect  of  harmonious 
47 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

beauty,  and  all  future  buildings  will  be  lo- 
cated in  accordance  with  this  adopted  scheme. 

If  one  feature  of  presidential  duty  may 
be  emphasized  at  the  expense  of  another,  it 
will  doubtless  be  agreed  that  the  chief  re- 
sponsibility of  the  college  president  is  for 
his  educational  staff.  Before  boards  of 
trustees  came  to  a  proper  comprehension  of 
their  limitations  they  took  official  notice  of 
the  fitness  or  unfitness  of  every  member  of 
the  faculty,  and  not  only  determined  the  re- 
tention or  dismissal  of  incumbent  professors 
and  instructors,  but  solemnly  debated  the 
qualifications  of  all  proposed  candidates  be- 
fore voting  to  fill  a  chair.  Their  opinion  of 
the  fitness  of  a  teacher  to  continue  was 
formed  upon  the  reports  concerning  him 
brought  from  immature  students  or  from 
some  other  incapable  informant.  As  to  the 
election  of  new  faculty  members,  the  board 
was  governed  in  most  instances  by  flatter- 
ingly worded  and  usually  worthless  testi- 
monials. 

It  has  not  been  many  years  since  the 
trustees  of  a  prominent  institution  in  the 

48 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

Central  West,  because  of  some  faculty  dis- 
sensions on  matters  of  discipline  which  could 
not  be  accurately  located,  declared  every  col- 
lege chair  vacant.  To-day  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  find  a  trustee  presumptuous  enough 
to  entertain  the  thought  of  passing  judg- 
ment on  the  qualifications  of  teachers.  The 
president  is  charged  with  this  responsibility, 
and  the  reputation  of  his  institution  must 
stand  or  fall  on  his  ability  to  meet  the  re- 
sponsibility. The  retention  of  present  mem- 
bers of  his  faculty  and  the  election  of  new 
members  in  the  properly  directed  college  will 
depend  entirely  upon  his  dictum.  Those 
who  object  to  granting  such  arbitrary  power 
to  one  man  will,  on  reflection,  admit  that  to 
hold  an  executive  responsible  for  all  the 
work  of  an  institution,  including  the  teach- 
ing done,  would  be  unfair  unless  therewith 
should  go  the  privilege  of  choosing  his  col- 
leagues for  whose  work  he  must  answer.  In 
some  instances  the  president  is  required  by 
ordinance  to  nominate  new  faculty  members, 
the  board  confirming  or  rejecting  his  nomi- 
nations. It  is  practically  a  universal  cus- 
4  49 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

torn  to  require,  in  one  form  or  another,  the 
recommendation  of  the  president  as  neces- 
sarily precedent  to  final  action.  As  a  rule 
an  instructor  who  knows  that  the  president 
will  not  recommend  his  retention,  finds  it  of 
little  avail  to  appeal  to  board  members  to 
decide  otherwise.  In  a  well-ordered  college 
system  he  is  referred  back  to  the  authority 
against  whose  judgment  he  enters  appeal. 
Such  power  will  not  be  used  by  a  high-minded 
official,  worthy  of  his  position,  in  a  tyran- 
nical way,  and  in  no  case  will  it  be  used  to 
satisfy  an  individual  grievance  or  to  avenge 
a  wrong,  either  real  or  fancied,  on  any  mere 
personal  grounds. 

The  alumni  of  an  institution  are  bound 
to  Alma  Mater  through  succeeding  years 
more  by  their  loving  interest  in  their  old 
teachers  than  by  any  other  consideration.  A 
few  years  distant  from  their  own  Commence- 
ment they  know  none  of  the  student  body, 
and  when  they  return  to  the  old  college,  more 
than  for  any  other  reason  it  is  to  sit  for  a 
brief  while  in  loving  devotion  at  the  feet 
of  the  ripe  scholars  who  were  at  once  the  in- 
50 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

spiration  and  the  benediction  of  their  forma- 
tive lives.  Knowing  this  to  be  true,  the  pres- 
ident of  the  real  college  will  spare  no  effort 
to  secure  the  permanency  of  tenure  of  his 
teaching  force.  If  here  and  there  he  finds 
a  colleague  whose  work  is  not  satisfactory 
and  can  not  be  made  so,  he  will  meet  the 
situation  fearlessly  in  the  interest  of  the 
young  people  committed  to  his  care,  but  he 
will  also  meet  it  with  a  thoughtful  regard 
for  the  feelings  of  the  colleague  concerned. 
A  resignation  is  always  less  painful  than  a 
dismissal.  It  tries  the  courage  of  a  manly 
president  more  to  ask,  in  the  spirit  of  kind- 
ness, a  resignation  than  it  does  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  board  to  demand,  with  heartless- 
ness,  a  dismissal.  The  unpleasant  responsi- 
bility will  be  accepted  for  the  welfare  of  the 
institution,  and  in  the  fraternal  spirit  the  un- 
satisfactory teacher  will  be  approached  by  his 
president  months  before  his  connection  with 
the  college  must  be  severed  with  a  courteous 
request  for  his  resignation.  An  instructor 
of  good  sense  will  appreciate  the  considera- 
tion that  prevents  a  humiliating  dismissal 
51 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

and  affords  him  ample  time,  while  still  under 
pay,  to  find  another  position,  and  his  resig- 
nation will  be  given  as  requested.  He  who 
lacks  this  fine  sense  of  appreciation  will  still 
be  dealt  with  in  fearless  kindness  by  his  su- 
perior and  will  not  be  retained  at  the  ex- 
pense of  institutional  efficiency.  A  capable 
teacher  the  president  will  endeavor  to  retain 
at  any  cost  and  will  summon  all  his  powers 
of  legitimate  persuasion  to  convince  his 
board  of  the  unwisdom  of  allowing  another 
college  to  deprive  them  of  the  services  of  a 
pre-eminently  successful  teacher  because  of 
the  alluring  offer  elsewhere  of  a  somewhat 
larger  salary.  Added  expense  is  worthy  of 
little  consideration  when  set  over  against  a 
proved  efficiency. 

No  less  care  is  required  in  making  addi- 
tions to  a  faculty  than  in  holding  those  who 
should  be  kept.  It  is  much  easier  to  get 
than  to  get  rid  of  a  man.  Testimonials  flat- 
tering in  the  extreme  are  easily  obtained 
from  those  of  large  reputation.  Indeed,  it 
is  notorious  that  some  men  boast  that  they 
give  recommendations  to  all  who  ask  them, 
52 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

expecting  that  those  to  whom  they  are  pre- 
sented will  be  able  to  read  between  the  lines. 
Again,  there  are  too  many  officials  and  heads 
of  departments  in  large  universities  who  are 
ever  willing  to  unload  their  "dead  timber" 
on  some  college,  and  if  a  strong  recommen- 
dation gives  promise  of  the  desired  relief 
they  do  not  tarry  long  to  conduct  an  argu- 
ment with  conscience.  Unusual  educational 
advantages  are  not  always  to  be  depended 
upon  as  a  guarantee  of  fitness  for  profes- 
sional appointment.  It  is  generally  known 
that  there  are  many  doctors  of  philosophy 
at  large  who  would  be  utterly  unequal  to  sat- 
isfactory work  in  a  country  school.  On  the 
other  hand  there  are  country  teachers  with- 
out large  education  who  could  do  better 
service  in  college  than  the  possessor  of  many 
diplomas.  University-trained  men  are  nu- 
merous, but  scholarly  teachers  of  magnetic 
enthusiasm  are  few.  The  capable  president 
will  not  be  satisfied  until  by  months — and 
years,  if  need  be — he  has  found  the  one  from 
among  the  few  who  will  give  to  his  students 
the  impetus  they  need  to  start  them  well  on 
53 


THE  KEAL  COLLEGE 

life's  perilous  journey.  Eecommendations 
will  be  accepted  for  what  they  are  worth, 
but  no  one  will  be  finally  employed  without 
a  personal  interview,  or  until  after  many  in- 
terviews, perhaps,  that  there  may  be  dis- 
covered a  personality  of  force.  A  half- 
hour's  talk  with  a  real  man  face  to  face  is 
of  infinitely  more  value  than  a  barrel  of  tes- 
timonials, or  degrees  without  number. 

The  discreet  president  will,  as  a  sound 
business  man,  hold  his  institution  within  the 
bounds  of  its  financial  limitations.  Nothing 
so  oppresses  an  institution  or  retards  its 
growth  as  an  incubus  of  debt.  The  wise 
executive  will  not  allow  his  desire  to  keep 
pace  with  other  colleges,  or  to  surpass  them, 
delude  him  into  the  belief  that  prosperity 
can  be  found  by  living  beyond  income. 

The  president  of  the  real  college  is  a 
despot,  and  no  limits  will  be  set  for  his  des- 
potism by  his  board  of  trustees  so  long  as 
his  power  is  not  abused,  while  his  institution 
thrives. 

In  considering  the  obligations  of  the  col- 
lege president  to  his  faculty,  the  pith  of 
54 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

it  all  may  be  entirely  comprehended  in  the 
statement  that  he  should  be  a  leader  without 
being  a  dictator.  He  is  an  executive — not 
an  autocrat.  The  president  of  a  college  and 
a  public  school  superintendent  do  not  oc- 
cupy analogous  positions  in  the  matter  of 
their  authority  over  those  who  teach.  The 
latter  official  directs  a  staff  the  majority  of 
whom  are  elementary  teachers.  Many  of 
these  are  so  young  in  years  and  experience 
as  to  require  the  constant  attention  of  a  su- 
perior guiding  mind.  Then,  too,  the  work 
of  the  various  grades  is  so  closely  correlated 
that  it  would  all  be  a  failure  unless  each 
made  its  full  contribution  to  the  whole  by 
following,  without  wavering,  the  plan  con- 
ceived and  laid  down  by  a  central  authority. 
Constant  and  arbitrary  supervision  is  a  pre- 
requisite to  the  largest  results  in  any  public 
school  system.  The  college  president,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  not  an  inspector,  and  need  not 
be.  His  colleagues  would  rightly  resent  any 
such  assumption  of  prerogative  by  him. 
Conditions  in  the  college  and  in  the  public 
school  are  very  different.  The  college  pro- 
55 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

fessor  is  employed  upon  recommendation  of 
his  president  because  he  is  a  specialist. 
Having  had  years  of  preparation  for  the 
work  of  his  department,  he  should  know  far 
more  in  the  line  of  his  specialization  than 
any  college  president,  and  he  should  be  guar- 
anteed the  largest  liberty  in  determining  the 
character  of  his  work.  Further  than  this,  it 
should  be  recognized  that  college  depart- 
ments in  large  measure  are  independent  of 
each  other.  To  be  sure,  certain  preliminary 
mathematical  study  is  necessarily  antecedent 
to  the  study  of  higher  mathematics.  The 
same  is  true  in  languages  and  other  branches 
of  collegiate  work,  but  these  preliminaries  are 
all  within  the  department  concerned,  and  the 
head  of  the  department  rather  than  the  head 
of  the  institution  is  responsible  for  their 
proper  presentation.  There  are  certain  re- 
lated groups  of  studies  in  different  depart- 
ments pursued  by  students,  but  each  part  o£ 
the  group  is  complete  in  itself  without  re- 
gard to  its  related  group.  It  is  evident, 
therefore,  that  upon  departmental  heads, 
and  not  upon  the  president  of  the  college, 
56 


PEESIDENT  OF  THE  HEAL  COLLEGE 

should  rest  the  full  responsibility  for  the 
work  of  the  department.  It  is  true  that  the 
president  is  responsible  for  the  work  of  his 
college,  and  that  sometimes  he  fails  to  do 
his  full  duty  to  his  students  by  a  negligence 
in  this  respect,  which  he  excuses  on  the 
ground  that  "professors  are  supposed  to 
know  their  business. ' '  The  wide-awake  pres- 
ident may  know  of  the  competency  or  incom- 
petency of  his  colleagues  by  ways  more  accu- 
rate than  personal  inspection  can  guarantee. 
The  college  community  is  much  more  compact 
than  a  large  public  school  system.  The  profes- 
sors do  their  work  in  classroom,  library,  and 
laboratory,  in  buildings  on  the  same  grounds 
and  near  to  each  other.  The  president,  when 
at  home,  is  constantly  in  their  midst,  and, 
with  his  hand  ever  on  the  college  pulse,  he 
knows  more  of  what  his  subordinates  are 
thinking  and  accomplishing  than  the  public 
school  superintendent  knows  of  his  teachers 
after  all  his  inspection.  The  daily  inter- 
course of  the  president  with  his  co-workers 
in  faculty  and  committee  meetings,  in  pri- 
vate conference  and  in  social  relationships, 

57 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

will  give  to  the  keen  reader  of  men  a  knowl- 
edge which  will  enable  him  to  render  fair 
judgment  on  fitness  in  the  day  of  final  reck- 
oning. The  president's  office  is  a  veritable 
cesspool  where  all  unpleasant  experiences 
are  deposited.  All  complaints  of  parents 
and  students  are  left  there,  and  if  the  presi- 
dent, as  a  spiritual  chemist,  is  skillful  in  fil- 
tering, the  residuum  will  reveal  to  him  the 
actual  substance  of  all  that  is  justly  charge- 
able against  his  complained-of  colleagues. 
The  president  presides  at  the  meetings  of 
his  faculty,  and  knowing  that  a  college  fac- 
ulty is  a  deliberative  body,  in  which  major- 
ities rightly  control,  he  will  make  his  rec- 
ommendations and  then  commit  their  desti- 
nies to  the  hands  of  his  associates,  leaving 
them  to  do  with  them  as  they  will.  When 
the  faculty  has  acted,  whether  in  accordance 
with  his  views  or  not,  the  president  will  exe- 
cute as  directed,  in  willing  obedience  to  the 
American  principle  of  majority  rule. 

It  will  be  agreed  that  the  general  policy 
of  the  institution  should  be  shaped  by  the 
president  as  its  responsible  head,  and  yet 
58 


PEESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

the  teaching  corps  shares  with  him,  accord- 
ing to  time-honored  precedent,  administra- 
tive duties  as  is  not  done  ontside  the  college. 
When  it  has  once  been  determined  just  what 
work  belongs  to  the  president  and  what  he 
divides  with  his  colleagues,  there  will  be  no 
unpleasant  clashing  of  authority.  The  diffi- 
culty is  that  here  and  there  is  a  president 
unsatisfied  unless  his  will  dominates  every 
department  of  academic  endeavor.  He  feels 
that  division  of  labor  will  spell  diminution 
of  his  power.  He  is  jealous  of  his  authority 
and  hesitates  to  make  slightest  relinquish- 
ment of  anything  that  will  keep  him  promi- 
nent as  a  central  figure.  The  truly  great 
president  is  he  who  recognizes  with  a  mod- 
ern writer  of  rising  fame  that  "The  best 
crowns  have  fallen  to  those  who  have  not 
sought  them."  His  wisdom  will  be  shown 
in  skillful  distribution  of  work  among  his 
faculty  members  according  to  their  several 
I  capabilities.  The  successful  college  presi- 
dent is  not  he  who  attends  to  every  detail  in 
person,  but  rather  the  one  who  masters  de- 
tails by  handing  them  over  to  other  compe- 

59 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

tent  persons.  Knowing  his  faculty,  the  pres- 
ident who  does  things  will  appoint  his  com- 
mittees with  such  good  judgment  that  his 
college  system  will  be  a  well-adjusted  and 
perfectly  working  machine.  He  will  watch- 
fully guard  his  own  prerogatives.  He  should 
have  the  veto  power,  such  as  is  granted  in 
many  colleges.  Such  privilege,  though,  he 
will  not  make  his  to  abuse.  He  will  use  it 
only  in  those  rare  instances  when  he  is  con- 
vinced that  a  faculty  action  is  thoroughly 
inimical  to  institutional  welfare.  In  most 
cases,  having  conceded  to  his  associates  in 
the  faculty  the  right  to  consider  certain  ques- 
tions with  him  on  merit,  he  will  be  governed 
by  the  expressed  opinion  of  the  greater  num- 
ber, even  though  it  run  counter  to  his  own, 
for  his  confidence  in  his  fellows  will  lead 
him  to  conclude  that  the  judgment  of  the 
sincere  many  must  be  superior  to  that  of 
the  sincere  one.  It  often  happens  that  a 
discussion  in  faculty  meeting  is  so  illumi- 
nating that  the  president,  broad  enough  to 
hold  himself  open  to  conviction,  experiences 
an  entire  change  of  mind  on  a  given  matter, 
60 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

and  he  is  forever  afterward  glad  that  he 
permitted  his  own  views  to  be  modified  by 
those  who  had  seen  better  than  himself.  The 
president  who  thus  shirks  no  responsibility, 
who  safeguards  the  interests  of  his  col- 
leagues before  the  board  of  trustees  and  de- 
fers with  fraternal  courtesy  on  all  proper 
subjects  to  their  opinions  will  be  supported 
with  an  unfailing  and  effective  loyalty. 

It  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  col- 
lege president  has  an  inescapable  obligation 
to  his  alumni.  The  graduates  of  the  college 
are  always  ready  to  bring  their  loving  hom- 
age and  lay  it  at  the  feet  of  the  man  who 
controls  the  destinies  of  Alma  Mater.  In 
turn  this  man  should  make  the  college  the 
permanent  servant  of  all  its  sons  and  daugh- 
ers  to  advance  their  spiritual  and  material 
well-being.  The  younger  graduates  should 
have  the  co-operation  of  their  college  in  get- 
ting properly  started  in  life's  work.  The 
alumni  of  all  the  years  will  appreciate  the 
interest  of  the  institution  that  educated  them 
in  making  their  achievements  known  to  the 
world  and  in  using  them  to  inspire  the  gen- 

61 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

erations  coming  after.  The  president  who 
knows  how  to  put  men  to  good  uses  will  re- 
alize that  one  of  the  valuable  assets  of  a 
successful  administration  is  a  devoted  body 
of  enthusiastic  alumni. 

It  is  to  the  undergraduates — that  incho- 
ate and  ebullient  mass  of  turbulent  energy 
and  tormenting  ambitions  called  the  stu- 
dent body — that  the  president  sustains  rela- 
tions of  most  solemn  and  sacred  obligation. 
These  keen  young  minds  will  read  him 
through  and  through.  To  others  he  may 
make  himself  opaque.  To  his  students  he  is 
always  thoroughly  transparent.  If  nothing 
else  can  make  him  humble,  their  knowledge 
of  him  will  always  hold  him  close  to  the 
ground.  What  wonderful  possibilities  of 
service  are  open  to  him  through  them  if  in 
all  honesty  he  is  ever  just  what  he  seems  to 
be,  and  nothing  more.  There  is  no  stronger 
disciple  of  the  gospel  of  the  "square  deal" 
than  the  young  collegian.  A  president  will 
never  control  him  by  abuse.  He  will  not  win 
him  by  oppression.  College  students  hold 
tyranny  and  play  to  the  galleries  in  equal 
62 


PEESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

contempt.  They  like  an  expression  of  confi- 
dence and  appreciation  when  it  is  merited. 
They  will  accept  deserved  rebnke  properly 
administered.  They  despise  unmerited  com- 
mendation. They  honor  perfect  frankness. 
The  alert  mind  of  yonth  is  qnick  to  distin- 
guish between  the  genuine  and  the  counter- 
feit. 

A  college  president  can  afford  to  be  an 
artisan  in  raising  money.  He  can  afford  to 
be  nothing  less  than  an  artist  in  shaping  im- 
mortal men.  He  is  a  molder  of  public  sen- 
timent, and  the  chapel  hour  affords  him  his 
finest  opportunity  for  this  service.  Sad  will 
it  be  for  academic  ideals  when  students  and 
faculties  are  not  brought  together  daily  in 
public  congregation.  It  is  true  that  Presi- 
dent Eliot  has  made  a  covert  attack  on  the 
time-honored  chapel  service  in  American  col- 
leges by  declaring  that  the  college  student 
"has  a  right  to  be  free  from  all  inducements 
to  cant,  hypocrisy,  or  conformity.  On  this 
account  voluntary  attendance  is  a  valuable 
element  in  academic  freedom.  No  student 
ought  to  be  able  to  suppose  that  he  will  gain 
63 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

anything  towards  high  rank  as  a  scholar  or 
social  standing  or  popularity  among  his  fel- 
lows by  any  religions  observance  or  affilia- 
tion whatsoever.  A  mercenary  or  profit- 
seeking  spirit  in  religious  practices  is  very 
injurious  to  young  people  and  is  peculiarly 
repulsive  in  them." 

The  writer  has  never  supposed  and  does 
not  believe  that  many  others  suppose  that 
chapel  services  are  required  for  the  purpose 
of  giving  to  students  high  rank  in  scholar- 
ship or  to  guarantee  social  standing  or  to 
make  popularity.  If  the  United  States  is, 
as  is  so  often  asserted,  a  Christian  nation, 
surely  a  brief  half -hour  set  aside  every  day 
when  teachers  and  taught  are  expected  to 
meet  together  to  make  united  acknowledg- 
ment of  blessings  and  to  offer  petition  for 
continued  mercies  from  the  God  of  the  uni- 
verse and  the  Savior  of  men,  is  not  incon- 
sistent with  our  notions  of  freedom.  There 
are  some  institutions  supported  by  public 
taxation  that  have  shown  reprehensible  cow- 
ardice on  this  question  of  religious  teaching 
and  requirement.  The  fact  that  men  of  all 
64 


PBESIDENT  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

creeds  and  men  of  no  creed  support  these 
institutions  is  not  reason  sufficient  for  fail- 
ure to  make  the  Christian  ideal  permanent. 
America  is  a  Christian  nation,  and  there  is 
no  valid  excuse  for  an  un-Christian  atmos- 
phere in  an  institution  supported  by  a  Chris- 
tian commonwealth  under  a  Christian  fed- 
eration. The  authorities  of  State  universi- 
ties and  city  colleges,  apparently  forgetful 
that  democracy  means  majority  rule,  are  too 
wont  to  make  apologetic  concessions  to  a 
minority.  It  is  not  much  wonder,  therefore, 
that  some  academic  communities  are  seeth- 
ing cauldrons  of  religious  skepticism,  if  not 
hotbeds  of  disturbing  agnosticism  and  de- 
spairing atheism.  The  same  sad  things  are 
true  of  some  of  our  greater  institutions  of 
private  foundation,  where  a  similar  excuse 
need  not  be  offered  for  religious  remissness. 
It  will  not,  of  course,  be  denied  by  any  broad- 
minded  person  that  the  minority  is  entitled 
to  a  respectful  consideration  of  its  convic- 
tions at  the  hands  of  the  majority.  It  is 
only  fair,  therefore,  that  certain  students  in 
church  colleges  as  well  as  in  State  and  mu- 
5  65 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

nicipal  institutions  should  be  excused  from 
compulsory  attendance  on  religious  exercises 
if  their  religious  beliefs  forbid  them.  In  a 
prominent  Western  college  supported  by  tax- 
ation it  is  the  practice  of  the  president  at 
the  beginning  of  every  college  year  to  an- 
nounce that  all  students  are  expected  to  at- 
tend daily  chapel  services,  but  that  if,  for 
conviction's  sake,  any  desire  to  be  excused, 
a  written  request  from  parent  or  guardian 
will  release  them  from  this  obligation.  It 
is  remarkable  that  in  five  years  there  has 
not  been  one  such  request  lodged  by  either 
Jew  or  Gentile.  The  chapel  service  in  that 
institution  does  not  follow  the  printed  order 
adopted  by  any  particular  sect  or  creed,  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  no  apology  direct  or  im- 
plied is  ever  offered  for  the  prominence 
given  the  ideals  and  teachings  of  the  Divine 
Christ.  More  than  that,  the  services  and 
exercises  are  so  attractive  that  the  students 
are  glad  to  attend.  A  brilliant  and  promis- 
ing young  man  of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith, 
who  was  Junior  in  the  college  referred  to, 
was  recently  asked  by  a  visitor  if  students 
66 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

were  required  to  attend  chapel,  and  the  im- 
mediate answer  was,  "Yes,  bnt  we  should 
go  without  compulsion,  for  we  would  feel 
that  we  were  missing  something  of  value  by 
absence.' ' 

At  Yale  University  the  students  some- 
times chafe  under  required  chapel  attend- 
ance, but  several  times  in  recent  years,  when 
the  question  has  been  under  discussion,  the 
latest  graduates  have  voted  overwhelmingly 
against  the  abandonment  of  the  requirement. 

Chancellor  McCracken,  of  New  York  Uni- 
versity, has  an  open  offer  to  his  students  of 
an  option  between  chapel  attendance  and  a 
literary  production,  and  the  chapel  service 
has  a  decided  advantage  in  popularity. 

Responsibility  for  Christian  example  can 
not  be  escaped  by  the  Christian  educator, 
and  students  honor  those  who  have  the  cour- 
age of  their  convictions.  A  spineless  teacher 
is  youth's  abhorred  antipathy. 

The  religious  value  aside,  the  chapel  serv- 
ice is  the  president's  great  opportunity. 
Here,  where  every  student  meets  every  other 
student  daily  in  elbow  touch,  and  where  he 
67 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

should  meet  all  his  instructors  face  to  face, 
is  developed  that  esprit  de  corps  which  welds 
all  into  the  oneness  of  a  college  solidarity  in- 
vulnerable and  invincible.  Here  the  artist 
president,  with  his  faculty  behind  him  and 
his  students  before  him,  may  mold  at  will 
the  personal,  the  civic,  and  the  religious 
ideals  of  the  coming  man.  He  will  not 
preach,  but  his  suggestive  remarks  will  be 
seed  in  a  fertile  soil  that  will  yield  an  abun- 
dant harvest.  A  passage  of  Scripture  effect- 
ively read  or  a  word  of  simple  prayer  fer- 
vently offered  may  be  so  deeply  impressed 
as  to  transform  a  life  or  change  a  nation's 
destiny.  On  this  chapel  platform,  after  de- 
votions are  over,  a  pleasant  turn  may  be 
given  to  an  announcement  so  that  the  hearty 
applause  or  ringing  laughter  will  send  the 
before  despondent  student  away  with  a  new 
song  upon  his  lips.  The  observing  president 
knows  that  frequent  cheers  for  the  country's 
flag  intensifies  love  of  the  flag  and  of  all 
for  which  it  stands.  As  a  wise  man,  there- 
fore, he  will  divide  his  public  chapel  service 
into  two  distinct  parts,  so  that  when  the  dig- 

68 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

nified  religious  service  is  finished  the  secu- 
lar part  will  allow  an  occasional  outlet  for 
surplus  vitality  through  college  or  class  yells, 
thereby  increasing  the  love  of  students  for 
the  institution  for  which  they  cheer. 

There  will  be  times,  but  only  at  rare  inter- 
vals, when  the  president  may  need  to  be  se- 
vere in  public  denunciation  of  wrong  atti- 
tudes or  actions,  and  without  the  chapel 
service  or  something  akin  thereto  there  will 
be  no  opportunity  to  reach  the  student  body. 
An  appreciative  word  of  commendation  for 
a  winning  team  or  for  a  lofty  principle  main- 
tained by  an  organization,  coming  from  the 
president,  will  strengthen  those  who  hear  to 
steel  themselves  for  greater  future  achieve- 
ments. An  appeal  wisely  worded  and  skill- 
fully presented  from  the  rostrum  will  hardly 
ever  fail  to  meet  with  a  hearty  response.  A 
company  of  college  students  is  the  easiest 
body  in  the  world  controlled  when  rightly 
handled;  it  is  the  easiest  body  on  earth  to 
antagonize  when  wrongly  handled.  Coarse 
work  here  is  fatal  to  good  results.  Halt  the 
coming  of  the  day  when  the  college  president 
69 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

shall  abdicate  his  throne  of  power,  the  chapel 
platform ! 

The  president  of  the  real  college  knows 
his  students.  Professors  may  address  them 
as  "Mr."  or  "Miss,"  but  the  president 
knows  and  calls  them  by  their  given  names, 
thus  making  them  feel  in  their  absence  from 
home  that  there  is  one  at  least  who  feels 
something  of  parental  interest  in  them. 
They  like  this  and  appreciate  the  pains  a 
busy  man  has  taken  in  them  to  know  them 
as  they  are  known  at  home.  Too  great  fa- 
miliarity with  young  people  will  work  in- 
jury, but  greater  injury  will  be  wrought  by 
the  college  president  whose  indolence  or 
coldness  prevents  the  establishment  of 
friendly  relations  with  his  students.  The 
president's  home  should  be  the  Mecca  of 
every  tired,  restless,  and  homesick  student. 
Not  only  should  the  president  realize  the 
obligation  that  rests  upon  him  to  establish 
right  ideals  of  social  forms  and  conventions 
by  swinging  wide  the  doors  of  his  house  for 
frequent  receptions  to  students  and  faculty, 
but  every  young  person  in  his  care  should 

70 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

feel  himself  drawn  to  his  president's  home 
in  every  time  of  need.  The  good  president 
will  feel  it  a  privilege  to  rise  at  any  hour 
of  the  night  to  meet  a  stndent  in  need  of 
counsel  or  sympathy,  and  blessed  indeed  is 
the  young  collegian  who  knows  that  he  dares 
to  make  snch  an  emergency  call.  The  presi- 
dent, alive  to  his  possibilities,  will  not  wait 
for  his  students  to  come  to  him.  He  will 
go  to  them.  He  will  be  a  frequent  visitor 
at  their  rooms  in  the  dormitory  and  the  fra- 
ternity house.  Visiting  often,  not  for  the 
purpose  of  espionage,  but  to  bring  the  en- 
couragement of  good  cheer,  his  students  will 
expect  him  at  any  time;  they  will  come  to 
anticipate  his  visits  with  pleasure,  and  they 
will  always  be  prepared  in  body  and  spirit 
to  receive  him.  Of  course,  all  this  would 
be  impossible  in  an  over-large  institution, 
but  then  it  is  the  real  college  that  is  un- 
der discussion. 

The  pathway  of  the  president  of  such  a 
college  is  pleasant  for  the  most  part.  It  is 
well,  though,  to  bear  in  mind  that  it  is  not 
rose-bordered  all  the  way.     Among  those 

71 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

who  come  to  college  are  some  to  whom  good 
influence  and  warm  interest  make  no  appeal. 
They  will  not  be  inspired  to  noble  endeavor 
by  any  sacrifice.  There  are  others  whose  im- 
pulses are  all  good,  but  in  a  moment  of  weak- 
ness perhaps  they  yield  to  a  temptation  that 
not  only  brings  personal  discredit  but  also 
works  irreparable  injury  to  their  college. 
The  president,  warm-hearted  and  sympa- 
thetic, will  reach  out  a  helping  hand  to  every 
one  that  it  is  within  his  power  to  save.  He 
will  have  the  spirit  that  is  willing  to  for- 
give the  individual  seventy  times  seven  if 
perchance  he  may  save  him  without  in- 
jury to  larger  interests.  To  confuse  real 
sympathy  with  superficial  sentimentalism, 
though,  would  make  a  college  president 
worse  than  a  mere  figurehead  in  the  estab- 
lishment and  maintenance  of  right  ideals  of 
life.  Love  of  youth,  without  a  proper  sense 
of  justice  in  such  a  man,  is  equally  as  bad 
as  cold-blooded  justice  without  love.  The 
executive  who  acts  in  sorrow,  but  who  acts 
because  he  must,  in  severely  disciplining  an 
offender  will  be  respected  by  the  offender 
72 


PEESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

and  will  be  honored  no  less  by  the  rank 
and  file  of  students  for  exhibition  of  stern 
justice  than  for  the  show  of  virtuous  pa- 
tience. 

In  all  things  the  real  president,  then,  is 
he  whose  force  of  character  will  command 
respect.  His  sense  of  propriety  will  be 
made  manifest  in  all  the  functions  of  his 
high  office.  He  will  be  a  youth  among  youth 
on  the  campus  and  in  all  suitable  places; 
his  students  will  come  to  expect,  though,  in 
all  formal  affairs  from  the  reception  of  dis- 
tinguished visitors  during  the  college  year 
to  that  climax  of  all  academic  events,  the 
conferring  of  degrees  on  Commencement 
day,  that  he  will  conduct  himself  in  a  man- 
ner which  shows  a  dignified  conception  of 
his  great  responsibilities.  The  nobility  of 
character  uniformly  preserved  from  day  to 
day,  year  in  and  year  out,  by  the  ideal  col- 
lege president,  will  provoke  in  young  lives 
surrounding  him  a  laudable  emulation  to 
noble  life  and  honorable  service.  He  will  be 
loved  for  what  he  is,  as  Arnold  of  Rugby, 
and  Jowett,  the  Master  of  Baliol,  were  loved 

73 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

by  their  English  boys.  They  will  think  it 
a  shame  to  be  mean,  because  he  believes 
them  to  be  in  general  opposition  to  meanness. 

The  commercialization  of  the  college  pres- 
idency is  a  reprehensible  evil  of  this  new 
academic  age.  The  president  of  the  real 
college  is  a  teacher.  Without  the  teachers' 
work  he  will  lack  the  teachers '  influence.  Un- 
less he  is  responsible  for  a  chair  and  shows 
scholarship  in  his  teaching,  he  will  be  looked 
upon  as  a  mere  business  manager  and  will 
be  without  that  weight  of  influence  which  is 
the  accompaniment  of  scholarly  authority  in 
some  one  great  subject  of  human  thought. 
The  classroom  is  the  college  president's 
"open  sesame"  to  the  mind  of  youth  and  to 
his  heart.  President  Harper,  that  wonder- 
working university  builder  of  modern  times, 
never  relinquished  his  teaching,  and  every 
undergraduate  looked  forward  with  whetted 
anticipation  to  the  day  prior  to  graduation 
when  he  should  sit  as  a  learner  in  the  class- 
room of  this  great  president. 

An  organizer,  a  publicist,  a  financier,  an 
orator,  an  author,  a  scholar,  a  teacher,  a 
74 


PRESIDENT  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

judge  of  men,  a  gentleman,  a  virile  Chris- 
tian, a  lover  of  youth,  a  forceful  leader — all 
these  are  embodied  in  the  president  of  the 
real  college.  He  makes  that  indefinable,  in- 
tangible, yet  wonderfully  real  thing  we  call 
a  college  atmosphere.  How  big  his  possi- 
bilities !    How  boundless  his  responsibilities ! 


75 


THE  STUDENTS  OF  THE  REAL 
COLLEGE 


THE  STUDENTS  OF  THE  REAL 
COLLEGE 

The  purpose  of  a  college  must  be  borne 
in  mind  when  its  student  body  is  under  dis- 
cussion. The  real  college,  with  the  sense  of 
the  responsibility  resting  upon  it  for  culture 
and  discipline,  seeks  to  reach  each  of  its  stu- 
dents as  an  individual.  Its  endeavor  is  to 
lay  broad  and  strong  and  deep  the  founda- 
tions of  character  for  the  erection  of  a  suit- 
able superstructure  of  specialization  and  cit- 
izenship. To  these  ends  it  will  spare  no 
efforts  for  the  establishment  of  habits  of  in- 
dustry, and  thoroughness  in  the  mastery  of 
difficulties,  and  persistency  in  resisting  evil 
and  shiftless  inclinations. 

If  this  general  purpose  is  to  be  accom- 
plished, the  student  body  in  our  real  college 
must  not  be  so  large  and  unwieldy  that  the 
individual  is  lost  in  the  mass.  President 
Schurmann,  of  Cornell  University,  has  de- 
79 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

clared  that  our  educational  problem  is  this: 
"Can  we  do  anything  for  the  development 
of  creative  reason  in  America  ?"  He  insists 
that  the  "  teacher  realize  that  reason  is  im- 
plicit in  the  pupil  and  that  it  is  his  busi- 
ness to  draw  it  out — this  achievement  is  the 
object  of  all  education.' '  As  though  in- 
spired, Doctor  Schurmann  says: 

"We  are  too  prone  to  rest  in  mere  knowl- 
edge of  facts.  Of  course,  it  is  easier  to 
teach  the  boy  facts  than  to  train  him  to 
think;  and  our  big  schools  and  large  classes 
make  the  problem  still  more  difficult.  Yet 
the  true  method  of  teaching  was  formulated 
and  illustrated  by  Socrates.  It  is  the  method 
of  personal  intercourse  with  constant  chal- 
lenging of  the  reasoning  faculty.  It  is  no 
accident  that  Socrates  produced  a  Plato,  or 
that  Plato  again  produced  an  Aristotle.  In 
America  we  have  been  too  prone  to  regard 
the  teacher  as  an  automatic  pump,  and  the 
boy's  mind  as  a  tub  to  be  filled.  The  boy's 
mind  is  really  a  spark  of  the  divine  reason 
and  the  business  of  education  is  to  fan  it 
into  a  living  flame." 

Is  it  conceivable  that  this  spark  can  be- 
come  a   flame  without   the   close   personal 

80 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

contact  of  the  Master  Teacher  with  the  in- 
cipient thought-life  of  the  student?  Is  it 
possible  to  have  this  contact  of  the  mature 
personality  with  the  immature  elsewhere 
than  in  a  college  with  a  limited  number  of 
students?  Amherst  College  and  Williams 
College,  it  will  be  agreed,  are  fair  represen- 
tatives of  the  best  type  of  the  real  college 
in  America.  In  1906-1907  the  enrollment  at 
Amherst  was  four  hundred  and  seventy-five, 
and  at  "Williams  four  hundred  and  ninety- 
six.  With  numbers  like  these  it  is  possible 
for  those  who  teach  to  impress  their  per- 
sonalities upon  the  taught  in  a  way  so 
strongly  inspirational  that  the  fires  of  zeal 
for  true  culture  may  be  kindled  from  em- 
bers of  heredity  into  bright,  glowing  flames 
of  self -activity. 

Unfortunate  indeed  is  the  student  who  is 
so  lost  in  a  wilderness  of  numbers  that  he 
is  unable  to  find  his  way  out  into  the  im- 
mediate light  of  his  teacher's  presence — sad 
his  lot  when  there  are  too  many  of  his  kind 
gathered  at  one  place  to  guarantee  him  from 
6  81 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

his  instructors  the  individual  attention  that 
is  his  crying  need. 

Thrice  unfortunate  the  student  in  the 
midst  of  the  crowd  who  is  obliged  to  depend 
upon  his  own  unaided  efforts  in  choosing  his 
courses  and  electing  his  studies  without  wise 
suggestion  from  an  experienced  and  inter- 
ested elder.  "Student  freedom"  is  a  eupho- 
nious and  fascinating  expression  that  has  be- 
come very  popular  in  recent  years.  No  pro- 
gressive twentieth-century  educator  would 
care  to  put  upon  the  youthhood  of  our  col- 
leges the  straight-jackets  that  were  worn  by 
the  collegians  of  a  century  agone.  We  all 
rejoice  in  the  liberty  which  guarantees  to 
the  student  in  our  day  the  right  to  think 
and  act  for  himself.  It  is  barely  possible, 
however,  that  we  have  overstepped  ourselves 
in  concessions  to  our  boasted  academic  free- 
dom. While  we  guarantee  the  student  the 
right  to  work  out  his  own  intellectual  sal- 
vation, is  it  not  better  that  his  undeveloped 
judgment  should  be  directed,  not  repressed, 
by  the  compulsion  of  a  mature  personality? 
In  a  recent  address  on  "Academic  Free- 
82 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

dom"  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  of 
Cornell  University,  President  Eliot,  of  Har- 
vard University,  speaking  of  freedom  for 
students,  said: 

"Interest  in  a  subject  is  an  indication  of 
fitness  for  its  study,  or,  in  other  words,  a 
student  is  much  more  likely  to  succeed  in 
a  subject  which  interests  him  strongly  than 
in  a  subject  which  does  not.  Achievement 
and  gain  in  power  are  the  true  rewards  of 
persistent  exertion  and  the  best  spurs  to  fur- 
ther effort.  The  college  student  ought  to 
be  free  to  specialize  early  in  his  course  or 
not  to  specialize  at  all;  to  make  his  educa- 
tion turn  on  languages,  mathematics,  his- 
tory, science,  or  philosophy — for  example — 
or  on  any  mixture  of  the  great  subjects." 

President  Eliot,  unsurpassed  among  the 
scholars  of  our  day  in  the  use  of  pure  Anglo- 
Saxon,  nevertheless  adopts  easily  the  cus- 
tom of  more  careless  Americans  in  using 
the  terms  college  and  university  interchang- 
ably,  as  though  they  were  perfect  syno- 
nyms. It  is  evident,  though,  in  speaking  of 
the  freedom  that  should  be  accorded  to  stu- 
dents hereinbefore  quoted,  that  he  really  re- 
83 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

fers  to  the  undergraduate — the  collegian.  It 
is  not  unthinkable  that  in  the  largeness  of  his 
institution  and  with  his  multitudinous  duties 
pressing  upon,  President  Eliot  has  become 
so  far  removed  from  intimate  contact  with 
his  undergraduate  students  that  he  has  con- 
fused them  in  his  thought  with  the  stronger 
minds  and  ripened  judgment  of  those  ready 
for  advanced  study  and  research  in  the  grad- 
uate and  professional  schools  of  his  institu- 
tion. It  is  certain,  at  any  rate,  that  he  as- 
sumes for  undergraduates  a  maturity  of 
judgment  that  in  reality  has  no  existence 
in  the  mind  of  the  average  college  student. 
It  is  the  experience  of  those  who  have  for 
years  been  identified  with  work  in  the  real 
college  that  the  student  permitted  to  make 
his  own  choice  of  subjects  or  courses  in  the 
beginning  has  often  come  to  the  day  of  grad- 
uation with  the  expressed  regret  on  his  lips 
that  he  had  not  taken  very  different  studies. 
The  young  man  or  woman  fresh  from  the 
preparatory  school  comes  to  college  with  ex- 
aggerated notions  of  his  own  rights  and 
with  little  knowledge  of  his  own  needs. 
84 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

That  which  he  thinks  he  does  not  want  may- 
be the  very  thing  he  requires  for  his  well- 
rounded  development.  The  college  is  not  a 
school  of  specialization,  and  the  student 
there  does  not  know  and  need  not  know  what 
his  vocation  in  life  is  to  be.  The  real  col- 
lege seeks  to  prepare  a  student  for  a  suc- 
cessful career  by  providing  him  with  a  sub- 
structure of  body,  mind,  and  character  that 
will  enable  him  in  later  years  to  build 
thereon  any  superstructure  that  his  devel- 
oped talents  and  mature  wisdom  may  lead 
him  to  choose.  Certain  peripatetic  lyceum 
lecturers  have  been  going  about  the  country 
in  recent  years  and,  declaiming  from  the 
platform,  they  have  shouted  that  there  never 
has  been  and  never  can  be  such  a  thing  as 
a  symmetrical  man  or  woman.  "Born 
short"  is  the  expression  on  which  these  fren- 
zied preachers  ring  the  changes.  That  no 
one  comes  into  the  world  with  the  begin- 
nings of  a  symmetrical  personality  is  a  tru- 
ism as  old  as  human  intelligence.  The  dec- 
laration can  not  be  relieved  of  its  triteness 
even  though,  for  the  sake  of  startling  at- 
85 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

tractiveness,  it  be  clothed  in  new  rhetorical 
garb.  It  is  admitted  without  argument,  in 
the  most  promising  cases,  that  childhood  and 
youth  never  come  to  the  beginning  of  any 
educational  period  with  an  endowment  of 
evenly  balanced  abilities.  The  linguistic  tal- 
ent of  one  may  be  strong,  while  the  mathe- 
matical gift  is  very  weak.  The  literary 
taste  of  another  may  be  pronounced  and  the 
scientific  bent  scarcely  discernible.  It  is  in 
recognition  of  this  inequality  of  talent  that 
our  whole  system  of  preliminary  education 
has  its  existence.  The  chief  object  of  the 
elementary  school,  the  secondary  school,  and 
the  college  is  to  fertilize  the  physical  and 
spiritual  waste  places  in  the  coming  man. 

To  develop  the  growing  youth  by  follow- 
ing the  line  of  the  least  resistance  in  each 
case  is  to  invite  into  being  an  abnormal  in- 
dividuality— a  grotesque  monstrosity.  It  is 
universally  recognized  that  one  weak  mem- 
ber of  the  body  means  a  weakened  effi- 
ciency for  the  remaining  members.  It  is 
equally  true  of  the  whole  man.  A  puny, 
sickly  body  is  insufficient  support  for  an 
86 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

alert  mind.  A  weak  mind  will  grant  license 
to  a  strong  body  for  evil  deeds.  Spiritually 
speaking,  the  same  truth  holds  good.  A  vig- 
orous intellect  can  not  bring  to  fruition  its 
conclusions  unless  reinforced  by  a  devel- 
oped will.  A  strong  will  may  send  a  weak 
intellect  on  many  a  fool's  errand  or  push 
an  unfinished  moral  nature  to  the  commis- 
sion of  crime.  There  are  already  too  many 
lopsided  people  in  the  land  of  the  living. 

With  all  the  education  possible  it  is  doubt- 
less true  that  a  perfectly  symmetrical  man- 
hood or  womanhood  can  not  be  presented  as 
the  product.  This  fact,  however,  does  not 
relieve  those  charged  with  the  responsibility 
of  teaching  from  the  obligation  of  earnest 
endeavor  to  produce  a  uniform  and  well- 
balanced  personality.  Much  of  the  failure 
among  men  in  later  life  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  specialization  has  found  unsteady  foot- 
ing on  uneven  foundation  stones.  The  su- 
perstructure of  vocation  totters  to  its  early 
fall  on  a  groundwork  firm  at  one  point  and 
fragile  at  others. 

The  solemn  responsibility  resting  heavily 
87 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

on  the  real  college  is  to  give  to  the  student 
that  training  which  shall  present  him  to  the 
university  or  professional  school  at  the  end 
of  his  course  so  well  rounded  in  body,  mind, 
and  spirit  that  the  superstructure  when 
erected  will  stand  forever  secure. 

There  is  no  more  pathetic  picture  in  our 
modern  life  than  that  which  shows  a  group 
of  unformed  young  people  about  a  college 
bulletin  board,  at  the  beginning  of  a  new 
semester,  endeavoring  to  select  from  the 
schedule  of  studies  those  which  will  prove 
easiest  for  them  or  most  to  their  liking.  If 
our  educational  forebears,  who  were  college 
professors  fifty  years  ago,  were  to  come 
forth  in  resurrection  robes  and  hear  these, 
young  people  in  their  mad  hunt  for  sinecures 
saying:  "0,  take  that!  It  's  a  snap!"  or, 
"Enter  that  course,  it  's  all  lectures !"  or, 
"Fight  shy  of  that  unless  you  want  to  cut 
out  your  dances  this  term!"  they  would  flee 
in  horrified  haste  back  to  their  charnel 
houses,  glad  to  hide  their  humiliation  in  eter- 
nal oblivion  beneath  the  whitening  dust  of 
their  crumbling  bones. 
88 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

It  is  not  easy  for  the  proud  spirit  to 
brave  the  obloquy  of  "progressive  educa- 
tors' '  by  declaring  against  the  modern  elect- 
ive system.  Indeed,  it  is  not  likely  that  any 
modern  thinker  would  advocate  a  return  to 
the  old  narrow  system  of  limited  required 
courses  for  the  Baccalaureate  degree.  As 
the  modern  curricula  in  many  instances  are 
too  large  in  the  freedom  they  grant  for  par- 
tial development,  those  of  other  days  were 
too  inflexible  to  allow  growth  of  the  inde- 
pendent thought  and  action  essential  to  later 
success.  To  permit  a  youth  "to  make  his 
education  turn  on  languages,  mathematics, 
history,  science,  or  philosophy,  or  any  mix- 
ture of  these  great  subjects,' '  as  President 
Eliot  suggests,  is  to  grant  a  freedom  for 
one-sided  development;  or  a  scrap-book  ma- 
turity. In  either  event  the  final  product  is 
an  unfinished  man.  To  allow  a  student  to 
study  history  because  he  does  not  like  mathe- 
matics is  to  grant  him  the  privilege  of  for- 
ever depriving  himself  of  the  sequential  rea- 
soning power  necessary  to  make  the  culture 
of  the  languages  effective.  To  allow  one 
89 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

who  is  lacking  the  scientific  mind,  because 
of  that  fact,  to  devote  himself  exclusively  to 
history  is  to  prohibit  to  him  the  equipment 
that  science  has  to  offer  him  for  the  classi- 
fication of  his  historical  knowledge.  Because 
crude  youth  lacks,  in  the  beginning,  a  taste 
for  the  humanities  is  not  reason  sufficient 
for  the  final  closing  of  the  door  to  those  soul- 
developing  influences  in  his  life  offered  by 
the  problems  of  philosophy  and  the  beauties 
of  literature. 

The  real  college  grants  to  its  students 
large  elective  freedom,  but  its  courses  are 
so  grouped  that  it  is  possible  for  the  student, 
while  following  his  natural  bent,  to  find  no 
way  of  escape  from  the  study  of  those  sub- 
jects which  supplement  natural  inclination 
in  the  way  that  will  make  this  natural  in- 
clination, when  developed,  most  effective. 
The  real  college,  recognizing  the  great  im- 
portance of  personal  contact  between  teacher 
and  taught,  will  at  the  very  beginning  of  the 
student's  college  life  guide  him  in  mapping 
out  his  course  as  the  needs  of  his  case  make 
revelation.  Entrance  credits  and  examina- 
90 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

tions  which  now  demand  a  certain  prepara- 
tion for  admission  should  be  amplified  by 
the  authorities  of  the  real  college,  and  the 
prospective  student  should  be  examined  in 
the  beginning  as  to  his  talents  and  his  lack, 
his  tastes  and  his  antipathies,  that  the  col- 
lege course  may  give  him,  by  its  discipline 
and  its  culture,  the  training  necessary  to  pre- 
pare him  for  effective  service  in  coming 
years. 

Bigness  in  numbers  tends  to  destroy  the 
sense  of  individual  responsibility.  Unfor- 
tunate is  the  student  so  swallowed  up  in  the 
crowd  that  his  consciousness  of  personal 
obligation  is  lost.  Is  it  not  easy  for  such 
a  student  to  feel  that  it  is  right  for  the  in- 
stitution to  suffer  the  reproach  that  he  as 
a  person  would  shrink  from  suffering? 

The  student  body  in  the  real  college  is 
not  of  one  sex.  Speaking  alone  for  the  young 
man,  let  it  be  said  that  an  Eveless  Eden  is 
impossible,  and  if  it  were  possible  it  would 
seriously  cripple  him  in  the  developing  pe- 
riod of  his  life.  Some  very  strong  argu- 
ments may  be  advanced  for  the  education  of 

91 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

young  women  in  isolation.  Solicitous  par- 
ents and  anxious  friends  are  justified  in 
every  sensible  endeavor  to  safeguard  the 
young  woman  against  all  possible  imposition 
by  wickedness  upon  innocence.  To  preserve 
the  sweetness  of  the  girlish  spirit  as  the  nu- 
cleus of  a  noble  womanhood  is  their  solemn 
duty.  It  is  borne  out  by  the  experience  of 
the  years,  however,  that  the  young  man 
of  prankish  mind  and  the  young  woman 
with  love  of  adventure  in  her  heart  find  the 
walls  that  shut  one  out  and  the  other  in  a 
challenge  to  their  spirit  of  daring,  and  un- 
less these  forbidding  walls  are  leveled,  they 
stand  but  to  convict  two  souls  of  shameful 
cowardice. 

The  scandal  that  is  so  much  feared  as 
the  result  of  bringing  young  men  and  women 
together  in  college  relations  is  almost  never 
realized  by  fulfillment  of  the  fear.  On  the 
contrary,  the  attempt  at  artificial  separation 
in  holding  girls  confined  alone  has  often 
brought  sad  consequences  because  of  the  un- 
conventional means  employed  by  young  men 
and  women  in  conspiracy  to  get  together 
92 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

through  defiance  of  unnatural  restraint. 
Young  women  under  sensible  chaperonage  in 
a  co-educational  institution  establish  easily 
for  themselves  a  code  of  conventions,  the  vi- 
olation of  which,  either  by  man  or  woman, 
brings  a  rebuke  of  censure  far  more  effective 
as  a  preventive  against  a  future  breach  than 
a  thousand  brick  walls  reared  by  unsympa- 
thetic authority.  It  is  inevitable  that  some 
day  women  must  be  brought  face  to  face 
with  men,  and  if  in  the  formative  period  of 
life  they  learn  to  meet  them  properly,  the 
chances  are  that  in  the  coming  years  of  con- 
firmed judgment  they  will  never  meet  them 
improperly. 

In  any  event  there  is  only  one  side  to  the 
argument,  so  far  as  young  men  are  con- 
cerned. That  they  are  advantaged  by  the  re- 
straints of  womanly  presence  on  the  campus 
and  in  the  classroom  is  easily  demonstrated 
by  comparing  the  manners  and  characters 
of  young  men  who  are  students  in  colleges 
for  men  only  with  those  of  young  men  who 
attend  coeducational  institutions.  Isolation 
of  men  in  college  no  less  than  in  a  mining 
93 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

camp  induces  brutality  and  degrading  coarse- 
ness. We  do  not  want  in  America  the  swag- 
ger of  the  German  student  whose  claim  to 
distinction  is  determined  by  the  bulldog  pipe, 
the  flowing  beer  mug,  the  ribald  song,  and 
the  number  of  scars  the  duels  fought  by  him 
have  left  upon  his  face. 

The  football  field  is  made  more  respect- 
able by  the  presence  and  loyal  support  of 
the  girl  students.  A  sentiment,  encouraged 
by  high  authority,  has  been  growing  in  re- 
cent years  that  may  entirely  destroy  the 
chivalric  spirit  of  the  American  gentleman. 
In  our  effort  to  develop  a  rugged  manhood 
there  should  be  a  care  that  we  do  not  lose 
the  finer  spiritual  qualities  in  the  bestial 
masculinity  of  a  mere  animal  strength. 
There  is  a  worse  evil  under  the  sun  than 
the  gentle  spirit  in  men.  Better  a  "  Molly 
Coddle"  than  a  "Bill  Bruiser."  The  mili- 
tant spirit  is  not  the  ideal  of  this  new  age. 
To  solve  the  social,  industrial,  and  political 
problems  that  are  the  challenge  of  advanc- 
ing civilization,  to  meet  the  business  com- 
petition as  man  should  meet  man,  to  fulfill 
94 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

the  expectations  of  the  home  life,  and  to 
make  the  Church  of  the  living  God  puissant 
in  the  uplift  of  humanity,  a  sturdy  manhood 
of  keen  mind  and  gentle  heart  is  required. 
A  strong  body  and  a  fearless  spirit  are  al- 
ways essential,  but  moral  courage  rather 
than  physical  daring  will  hasten  the  morning 
dawn  of  the  perfect  day.  A  lofty  concep- 
tion of  honor,  a  generous  appreciation  of 
the  claims  of  others,  a  fine  sense  of  justice, 
a  boldness  to  do  the  right  at  any  cost,  a 
zeal  for  virtue,  an  unaffected  gentility,  and 
a  love  for  toil  will  give  to  the  world  its 
mightiest  potentiality  for  good — a  manly 
gentleman.  Such  a  type  of  genuine  man- 
hood can  be  developed  only  by  association 
with  womanhood — where  native  roughness 
becomes  the  brave  spirit  of  gallant  knight- 
hood by  the  tempering  process  the  constant 
presence  of  the  gentler  sex  compels. 

Better  intellectual  results  are  secured 
where  men  meet  women  on  a  footing  of  com- 
petition in  the  classroom.  A  young  man  will 
often  allow  a  more  industrious  student  of 
his  own  sex  to  surpass  him,  but  the  pride  of 

95 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

inherent  manhood  will  make  the  achieve- 
ment of  the  young  woman  at  his  side  an 
incentive  to  endeavor  that  will  bring  out  by 
honest  toil  the  best  of  which  his  intellect  is 
capable.  The  real  college  is  a  college  for 
men  and  women.  The  relative  number  of 
women  to  men  has  no  large  place  in  this  dis- 
cussion. It  may  be  said  in  passing  that  a 
majority  of  women  present  in  any  institu- 
tion tends  to  discourage  the  virile  spirit 
that  should  be  grown.  The  feminization  of 
men  by  overwhelming  numbers  of  women  is 
exceedingly  undesirable.  One  young  woman 
to  four  young  men  in  a  given  student  body 
would  seem  to  be  about  the  proper  ratio  to 
give  to  manhood  the  needful  stimulus  for 
earnest  work  and  gentlemanly  bearing. 

The  students  in  the  real  college  are  dem- 
ocratic. In  the  large  institution  bigness  is 
the  foe  to  democracy.  The  numbers  there 
are  sufficient  to  enable  those  who  come  from 
a  particular  social  class  to  bind  themselves 
together  in  groups  that  are  large  enough 
without  the  necessity  of  seeking  those  who 
belong  to  another  class.  The  sons  of  the 
96 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

rich  gravitate  toward  those  of  their  fellows 
who  are  scions  of  the  same  artificial  aristoc- 
racy. Those  of  moderate  means  are  driven 
by  exclusion  from  the  wealthier  clubs  to  find 
their  associates  among  those  of  their  kind, 
while  those  whose  poverty  commands  toil  to 
give  them  the  means  for  their  education  must 
struggle  through  the  course  as  best  they 
may  without  comfort  of  the  Protean  com- 
radeship which  means  so  much  in  academic 
life. 

In  the  real  college,  where  every  student 
knows  every  other  student,  the  numbers  are 
not  large  enough  to  permit  the  formation  of 
cliques  on  unnatural  lines.  Here  the  son  of 
wealth  touches  elbows  with  the  son  of  toil, 
and  the  reciprocal  love  and  respect  induced 
are  a  preparation  for  the  coming  better  day, 
when  the  only  caste  recognized  in  American 
civilization  will  be  the  caste  of  efficiency. 
Thus  is  the  real  college  the  largest  hope  for 
the  breaking  down  of  those  unnatural  bar- 
riers which  are  the  menace  of  our  national 
perpetuity.  The  authorities  of  the  large 
universities  with  college  departments  are 
7  97 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

coming  to  recognize  the  great  advantage 
that  the  real  college  enjoys  by  its  limited 
numbers  for  the  development  of  trne  de- 
mocracy. Already  some  of  them  are  devis- 
ing means  to  bring  to  their  institutions  the 
advantages  which  are  now  the  exclusive 
property  of  the  institution  smaller  in  the 
number  of  its  students.  Doctor  Woodrow 
Wilson,  one  of  the  most  progressive  of  mod- 
ern university  presidents,  an  administrator 
who  is  striving  in  the  spirit  of  sanity  to 
hold  for  his  institution  all  that  is  best  of 
the  old,  while  he  reaches  out  to  claim  for 
his  own  all  that  is  good  in  the  new,  has 
proposed  a  means  of  bringing  all  the  oppor- 
tunities for  the  nurture  of  democracy  that 
belong  to  the  real  college  into  the  under- 
graduate college  of  the  university.  In  a  re- 
cent report  to  his  board  of  trustees  Presi- 
dent Wilson  has  recommended  a  scheme  that 
would  "draw  the  undergraduates  together 
in  residential  squads,  in  which  they  shall  eat 
as  well  as  lodge  together,  every  undergrad- 
uate being  required  actually  to  live  in  his 
squad,  each  squad  being  likewise  provided 
98 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

with  a  handsome  common  room  for  the  pur- 
pose of  social  intercourse,  in  addition  to  the 
common  dining-room  and  common  kitchen." 
It  is  doubtful  whether  this  plan  will  accom- 
plish what  is  hoped  for  it.  The  democratic 
spirit  may  be  developed  within  the  squad, 
but  along  therewith  there  will  be  a  corre- 
sponding loss  of  loyalty  to  the  name  of 
Princeton.  Love  for  the  ideals  of  the  squad 
will  supplant  love  for  the  ideals  and  tradi- 
tions of  the  institution.  In  the  real  college 
the  squad  is  not  a  wheel  within  a  wheel — it 
is  the  whole  student  body  of  the  institution. 
There  the  name  of  the  college  is  given  to 
the  one  and  only  squad,  and  loyalty  to  the 
institution  with  its  customs  and  standards 
is  inevitable  and  supreme.  The  Princeton 
plan  contemplates  a  modification  of  the  Eng- 
lish system  of  multiplied  colleges,  the  squad 
being  substituted  for  the  college.  There  will 
be  this  difference  between  the  English  col- 
lege and  the  Princeton  plan:  At  Oxford  the 
loyalty  of  the  students  is  always  for  the  col- 
lege of  their  membership,  rather  than  for 
that  well-nigh  intangible  something  called 
99 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

the  University  of  Oxford,  which  exists  only 
by  the  sufferance  of  several  individual  col- 
leges. The  students  shout  for  Merton  or 
Oriel,  or  Christ  Church,  or  Baliol  or  Mag- 
dalen, and  the  coat  of  arms  they  revere  is 
that  of  their  college  rather  than  that  of  the 
university.  Princeton  will  hardly  care  to  sac- 
rifice the  chief  asset  of  her  development,  loy- 
alty to  the  university,  to  loyalty  to  a  squad. 
The  devotion  of  alumni  to  the  corporate 
name  is  always  to  be  preferred  even  above 
the  democratic  spirit.  The  real  democracy, 
as  a  feature  of  academic  life,  can  be  realized 
only  by  its  nurture  in  smaller  groups.  As 
the  size  of  the  Swiss  Republic  has  made  it 
the  purest  type  of  a  democratic  government 
among  the  nations,  so  to  the  real  college, 
alone,  is  committed  the  exclusive  mission 
of  undergraduate  democratization.  If  the 
larger  universities  are  willing  to  break  their 
undergraduate  bodies  up  into  small  groups, 
with  a  sacrifice  thereby  of  loyalty  for  the 
greater  institution,  we  may  grow  this  indis- 
pensable spirit  of  our  Americanism  there — 
100 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

otherwise  the  real  college  will  continue  to 
be  the  nursery  of  true  democracy. 

The  real  college  is  exclusive — not  in  the 
sense  of  refusing  its  opportunities  to  young 
people  from  any  walk  of  life  or  any  condi- 
tion of  purse.  It  is  not  exclusive  in  the 
recognition  of  the  European  idea  of  family 
aristocracy.  The  real  college,  standing  for 
a  nobility  of  character,  is  exclusive  in  the 
matter  of  numbers  and  in  standards  of 
scholarship  and  life.  It  demands  from  those 
who  would  become  students  a  thorough 
readiness  for  college  life,  and  those  who 
can  show  a  burning  desire  for  intellectual 
achievement  and  a  lofty  moral  conception 
are  eligible  for  admission  to  its  halls.  When 
these  requirements  have  been  satisfied  no 
question  of  possession  or  birthright  will  be 
raised.  Indeed,  to  realize  an  ideal  condi- 
tion, the  students  in  the  real  college  will  rep- 
resent, as  to  parentage,  a  diversity  of  occu- 
pations. Exclusive  in  the  sense  of  limited 
numbers,  ability,  and  character,  the  spirit 
of  true  democracy  can  best  be  grown  in  an 
atmosphere  where  the  youthful  offspring  of 
101 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

farmer,  mechanic,  merchant,  professional, 
and  laborer  touch  elbows  while  under  the 
wholesome  instruction  of  sane  teachers. 
Thus  the  real  college  develops  that  spirit  of 
toleration  for  the  views  of  others,  that  gen- 
erous respect  for  all  honest  vocations,  that 
broad  sympathy  for  all  conditions  of  men, 
and  that  unstinted  love  for  all  the  race 
which  is  the  chief  hope  of  the  republic. 

Even  under  the  most  favorable  condi- 
tions the  democratic  spirit  is  not  easily  prop- 
agated, for  a  study  of  the  civilization  proc- 
esses justifies  the  question  raised  but  re- 
cently by  a  distinguished  editorial  writer, 
"whether,  contrary  to  the  historical  theory, 
democracy  is  not  an  acquired  taste  and 
snobbery  the  natural  instinct  of  man.,,  The 
real  college  may  easily  become  unreal.  Un- 
der improper  direction,  or  from  lack  of  di- 
rection, on  the  part  of  those  charged  with 
the  responsibility  of  maintaining  its  ideals, 
the  student  body  and  faculty  readily  drift 
into  exaggerated  notions  of  their  own  supe- 
riority, and  their  academic  community  is 
soon  a  small  aggregation  of  useless  and  in- 
102 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

sufferable  egotists.  Students  readily  form 
themselves,  even  in  the  smallest  of  colleges, 
into  cliques  of  various  sorts,  and  these,  un- 
checked in  the  inclination  to  establish  false 
notions  of  merit,  ultimately  drive  out  and 
effectively  keep  away  those  who  can  not  or 
will  not  drop  naturally  into  one  of  these  sets. 
Thus  the  college,  instead  of  continuing  to 
be  the  fallow  ground  of  a  healthy  democ- 
racy, becomes  the  fecund  soil  for  the  germi- 
nation of  a  spindling  aristocracy. 

For  years  a  war  of  words  has  been  rag- 
ing about  the  American  college  fraternity 
system  as  a  question  of  dispute  among  those 
who  are  jealous  for  the  best  interests  of  the 
real  college — and  the  battle  is  still  on. 
Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  the  fraternity  as 
an  institution  of  college  life  has  existed  for 
more  than  a  century  and,  with  its  extensive 
chapter  houses  and  libraries  and  great  con- 
ventions, its  catalogues  and  periodicals,  with 
ramifications  reaching  out  among  thousands 
of  loyal  alumni  from  the  humblest  walks  of 
life  up  to  those  whose  literary  fame  or 
political  glory  has  not  operated  to  destroy 
103 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

the  love  of  their  college  fraternity,  it  is 
here  to  stay. 

That  evils  may  follow  in  its  wake  is  none 
the  less  time  of  a  college  Greek  letter  fra- 
ternity than  of  any  other  human  organiza- 
tion. Its  opponents,  however,  are  all  on  the 
outside,  and  if  they  could  but  know  how  ut- 
terly harmless  the  average  college  fraternity 
really  is  they  would  vote  themselves  worthy 
of  admission  to  the  grade  of  laughing-stock. 
It  will  be  conceded  that  any  organized  group 
composed  of  maturing  men,  without  sug- 
gestion or  direction  from  interested  elders, 
may  easily  degenerate  into  a  hateful  and 
useless  clique  of  intolerable  snobs.  Worse 
than  that,  an  undirected  or  misdirected  or- 
ganization of  this  sort  may  become  a  hot- 
house for  intellectual  dissipation  and  gross 
misconduct. 

The  modern  fraternity  house,  inhabited 
altogether  by  young  men,  and  servants  de- 
pendent upon  these  young  men  for  their 
hire,  is  a  standing  invitation  to  indolence, 
inordinate  pleasure,  roughness,  and  vul- 
garity. It  will  hardly  be  denied  that  the 
104 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

absence  of  woman's  restraining  influence,  in 
addition  to  the  lack  of  respected  authority 
exerted  by  an  older  man,  will  induce  degrad- 
ing action  in  the  unbridled  younger  spirits 
who  reign  supreme  in  a  house  they  call  their 
own.  The  youth  who  leaves  the  parental 
roof-tree  for  college  halls  with  some  sense 
of  the  proprieties  instilled,  with  delicate  but 
not  prudish  conception  of  the  sacred  right 
of  personal  privacy,  and  with  some  notions 
of  manly  refinement,  may  be  shocked  at 
first  with  what  he  sees  in  the  house  of  the 
fraternity  with  which  he  has  cast  his  lot. 
A  young  man,  though,  is  very  strong  at 
eighteen  or  nineteen  years  of  age,  who  does 
not  sooner  or  later  become  spiritually  in- 
fected by  the  frequent  hearing  of  the  pro- 
fane oath,  the  filthy  word,  and  the  salacious 
story.  He  is  extraordinarily  impervious  to 
impressions  if  he  does  not  lose  his  respect 
for  privacy  as  he  looks  upon  his  brothers 
running  about  the  hall  or  appearing  in  the 
parlor  scantily  clad  or  entirely  unclothed. 

It  is  hard  for  any  chap  with  music  in 
his  soul  to  resist  the  temptation  to  leave 
105 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

his  studies  when  the  guitars  and  mandolins 
are  thrumming  or  when  the  piano  is  gallop- 
ing away  in  the  lead  of  a  rollicking  song. 
Many  fathers  and  mothers  would  never  send 
their  sons  to  college  if  the  veil  could  be 
lifted  to  them  for  an  advance  view  of  the 
orgies  about  the  gaming  table  and  the  foam- 
ing beer  schooner  of  the  fraternity  house. 
The  conspiracy  of  falsehood  to  shield  a  sin- 
ning fraternity  brother  or  to  cover  the  com- 
bined misconduct  of  several  or  all,  the  plot  of 
politics  to  secure  preferment  by  fair  or  unfair 
method,  without  regard  to  merit,  make  the 
Greek  letter  society  in  some  colleges  a  curse 
and  not  a  blessing.  Bad  as  all  these  evils 
may  be,  however,  the  most  serious  handi- 
cap to  any  institution  of  learning,  in  the  ex- 
tent of  its  influence  as  a  healthful  factor 
in  modern  society,  is  that  put  upon  it  by 
student  organizations  whose  members  have 
built  about  themselves  walls  of  exclusive- 
ness  on  foundations  of  groundless  belief  in 
their  own  inalienable  importance. 

Pride  of  an  institution  in  its  own  off- 
spring would  forbid  the  writer,  if  he  were 
106 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

otherwise  disposed,  the  privilege  of  an  un- 
qualified condemnation  of  college  frater- 
nities.1 

These  evils  arising  from  fraternity  life, 
when  they  are  found,  do  not  exist  because 
the  organization  is  a  Greek  letter  society. 
Given  similar  conditions,  and  they  are  found 
in  the  clubs  and  social  organizations  of 
those  institutions  which  forbid  to  their  stu- 
dents membership  in  fraternities.  Indeed, 
the  clubs  of  the  anti-fraternity  colleges  are 
often  worse  in  their  immorality  because  their 
organizations  are  purely  local.  They  have 
no  feeling  of  responsibility  for  their  actions 
nor  pride  in  maintaining  the  good  name  of 
a  great  national  body  of  which  they  are  a 
part,  such  as  the  national  fraternities  have. 

Under  proper  direction  the  fraternities, 
clubs,  or  societies  may  fix  the  standards  of 
college  life  and  be  a  democratizing  force  in 
academic  activities. 

l  Three  of  the  great  Greek  Letter  fraternities,  Beta  Theta 
PI,  Phi  Delta  Theta,  and  Sigma  Chi  were  born  at  Miami  Univer- 
sity. The  second  chapter  of  Alpha  Delta  Phi  was  also  estab- 
lished here,  as  well  as  one  of  the  earlier  chapters  of  Delta 
Kappa  Epsilon. 

107 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

In  the  case  of  the  great  national  fra- 
ternities it  is  true,  in  nearly  every  college, 
that  the  faculty  is  represented  by  the  mem- 
bership of  one  or  more  of  its  body  in  every 
fraternity  in  the  institution.  In  the  national 
Greek  letter  fraternities  it  is  "once  a  mem- 
ber, always  a  member,"  and  any  fraternity 
takes  pride  in  pointing  to  the  fact  that  this 
faculty  member  or  that  is  a  member  of 
their  brotherhood. 

The  college  professor  has  the  privilege 
of  going  to  the  chapter  house  or  of  attend- 
ing the  meetings  of  his  fraternity  whenever 
he  chooses  to  do  so,  and,  better  than  that, 
he  is  always  received  with  open  arms  and 
the  grip  of  welcome  by  the  students  of  the 
chapter.  In  the  real  college  the  professor 
alive  to  the  possibilities  of  this  close,  per- 
sonal contact,  while  not  assuming  to  dictate, 
will  lead,  by  their  own  consent,  the  student 
members  of  his  fraternity  in  the  establish- 
ment of  standards  of  intellectual  and  moral 
excellence  that  will  guarantee  to  them  their 
own  self-respect  while  they  win  the  respect 
of  others.  The  alumni  of  a  fraternity  are 
108 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

always  an  asset  of  pride,  and  the  active 
members,  anxious  for  the  support  of  those 
who  have  gone  out  in  other  years,  will  yield 
ready  acquiescence  to  the  suggestions  of  their 
graduates  as  to  the  ideals  they  should  seek  to 
realize  for  themselves.  Faculty  members  and 
alumni,  co-operating  with  young  men  who  are 
anxious  to  do  right  when  they  are  shown  the 
way,  may  make  the  fraternity  a  potent  fac- 
tor in  all  that  is  best  in  college  life.  No 
one  interested  in  the  future  of  the  republic 
would  want  to  extract  one  drop  of  good  red 
blood  from  the  veins  of  the  husky  collegian. 
In  fact,  the  man  or  woman  so  straight-laced 
that  he  can  not  see  the  possibilities  of  vig- 
orous, joyous  youthhood,  and  who  would 
forbid  to  the  students  the  happiness  that  is 
found  in  true  college  spirit,  is  an  enemy  to 
modern  civilization,  fit  to  be  relegated  to  the 
gallery  of  the  antiquities.  That  the  college 
fraternity  does  raise  the  standard  of  mo- 
rality, maintain  the  scholarship  of  its  mem- 
bers, and  encourage  democracy  in  many  col- 
leges, is  confirmed  by  the  testimony  of  those 
who  know.  There  are  colleges  in  America 
109 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

where  fraternity  prayer-meetings  and  cir- 
cles for  Bible  stndy  flourish,  and  the  mem- 
bers of  the  fraternities  where  these  things 
obtain  are  not,  in  the  parlance  of  the  campns, 
college  "sissies" — they  are  wide-awake, 
manly  young  fellows,  taking  a  serious  view 
of  life  while  they  bubble  over  with  good 
cheer. 

There  is  a  chapter  of  a  great  national 
fraternity  in  a  typical  real  college,  whose 
members  are  among  the  finest  and  most 
highly  respected  students  of  the  institution, 
and  they  will  not  allow  any  false  notions  of 
fraternity  and  fraternal  obligations  to  take 
root.  These  say  to  their  new  members: 
'  i  Call  on  us  for  help  and  sympathy  whenever 
needed.  We  will  support  you  against  injus- 
tice. If  you  go  wrong  we  may  forgive  you 
the  first  time,  perhaps  the  second  time,  and 
help  you  to  your  feet ;  but  if  you  persist  and 
become  chronic  in  your  wrongdoing,  we 
shall  not  enter  into  any  conspiracy  of  false- 
hood or  deception  to  shield  you  from  the 
penalties  you  should  suffer  at  the  hands  of 
the  authorities  for  violence  to  the  standards 
110 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

of  the  college.  More  than  that,  we  shall  co- 
operate with  the  faculties  in  meting  ont  jus- 
tice to  you."  This  same  fraternity  has  one 
of  its  upper-classmen,  whose  regularly  ap- 
pointed duty  it  is  to  call  once  a  month  upon 
the  registrar  of  the  college  for  reports  of  the 
work  being  done  in  the  classroom  by  all  the 
members  of  the  fraternity.  This  report  is 
carried  to  the  next  meeting  of  the  chapter, 
and  the  delinquents  are  exhorted,  for  their 
own  sakes  as  well  as  for  the  sake  of  the  fra- 
ternity and  the  institution,  to  devote  them- 
selves more  assiduously  to  the  preparation 
of  their  lessons.  The  members  of  this  frater- 
nity are  leaders  in  athletics,  debate,  and  in 
the  activities  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association.  They  stand  high  in  a  social  way 
and  know  how  to  appear  as  gentlemen  at  re- 
ceptions and  other  formal  functions.  Some 
of  the  members  of  this  fraternity  are  from 
homes  of  wealth,  some  are  of  moderate 
means,  a  few  are  poor,  and  one  of  the  last- 
mentioned  class,  a  most  highly  respected 
young  man,  fires  the  furnace  and  acts  as 
house  janitor  to  defray  his  expenses  in  col- 
Ill 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

lege.  The  composite  of  wealth,  moderate 
means,  poverty,  and  character  cemented  to- 
gether in  indissoluble  nnion  in  this  frater- 
nity gives  the  everlasting  lie  to  the  oft-re- 
peated and  unsupported  statement  that  the 
college  fraternity  is  always  and  necessarily 
undemocratic  and  a  hotbed  of  iniquity.  In 
the  real  college  the  fraternities  do  not  form 
a  caste,  but  are  simply  a  group  of  congenial 
spirits,  true  to  certain  obligations,  but  rec- 
ognizing that  the  college,  and  not  the  fra- 
ternity, should  be  the  chief  object  of  their 
affection.  The  men  of  the  fraternities  by 
the  mechanism  of  organization  may  fix 
standards  of  conduct  and  scholarship  which 
will  control  the  student  body,  and  meeting 
the  humblest  non-fraternity  man,  not  in  a 
patronizing  way,  as  an  inferior,  but  cor- 
dially, as  a  worthy  fellow,  the  elective  of- 
fices of  the  student  body  will  go  to  those 
pre-eminently  qualified,  without  regard  to 
affiliations.  Thus,  in  the  real  college,  there 
may  arise  and  flourish  a  real  democracy. 

The  fullest  measure  of  self-government, 
consistent  with  the  security  of  society,  is 
112 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

always  desirable  among  men.  If  students 
in  days  of  preparation  for  the  obligations  of 
the  great  outside  world  are  encouraged  to 
establish  for  themselves  an  ethical  system 
which  holds  them  constant  in  their  efforts  to 
regard  the  rights  of  their  fellow-men,  to  be 
loyal  to  the  State,  to  fulfill  their  duties  to 
God,  and  to  be  true  to  themselves,  collegians 
may  prove  to  be  the  little  leaven  that, 
thrown  into  society,  will  so  leaven  the  whole 
lump  of  our  civilization  as  to  emphasize  the 
insanity  of  anarchy  and  make  all  the  re- 
quirements of  the  law  an  unnecessary  arti- 
ficiality. To  this  end  the  real  college  should 
grow  to  the  fullest  possible  extent  a  system 
of  student  government  such  as  is  well  exem- 
plified at  Bowdoin  College.  The  beginning 
of  this  self-dependence  is  found  always  in 
the  classroom  where  the  college  professor  of 
large  vision  encourages  the  student  at  the 
outset  to  develop  his  powers  of  individual 
initiative.  The  old-fashioned  college  pro- 
fessor was  unwilling  to  grant  the  student 
an  opinion  of  his  own  worthy  of  considera- 
tion, but  insisted  that  it  was  the  prerogative 
8  113 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

of  the  teacher  to  do  all  the  thinking.  The 
student  in  our  real  college  is  allowed  opin- 
ions of  his  own  in  the  classroom,  provided 
only  that  they  are  presented  with  due  re- 
spect. The  old-style  literary  or  debating 
society,  with  its  governance  in  the  hands  of 
the  students,  with  its  orations,  essays,  im- 
promptus, debates  and  drill  in  parliamen- 
tary practice,  is  an  invaluable  aid  to  inde- 
pendent thought.  The  Honorable  Whitelaw 
Eeid,  our  ambassador  to  the  Court  of  Saint 
James,  has  declared  in  the  later  years  of 
his  life  that  among  the  strongest  agencies 
in  developing  his  power  of  independent 
thought  and  expression  while  a  student  at 
Miami  University,  was  a  debate  extending 
through  several  weeks  to  determine  whether 
or  not  a  new  carpet  should  be  purchased 
for  the  hall  of  the  Erodelphian  Literary  So- 
ciety. 

Independent  thinking,  within  due  bounds, 
is  necessary  to  independent  action  in  the 
ordering  of  a  life.  In  the  desire  to  develop 
a  stalwart  character  by  the  encouragement 
of  independence,  there  are  colleges  that 
114 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

have  fallen  into  the  error  of  turning  the  en- 
tire government  over  to  students.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  these  ill-considered  experiments 
have  often  proven  disastrous  and,  far  from 
bringing  about  the  desired  order,  have  pro- 
duced the  chaos  of  misrule.  To  assume 
that  the  average  youth  in  his  minority  has 
developed  the  judgment  necessary  to  take 
upon  himself  the  entire  responsibility  for 
devising  alone,  or  in  concert  with  others  of 
his  kind,  a  system  of  satisfactory  govern- 
ment, is  to  assume  a  maturity  which  expe- 
rience tells  us  minors  do  not  possess.  The 
Bowdoin  system  of  self-government  is  an 
evolution.  It  does  not  spring  into  existence 
full-grown.  It  is  the  outgrowth  of  years  of 
careful  experiment.  Where  Bowdoin  has 
succeeded  gloriously,  others  have  made  in- 
glorious failure.  The  parent  sending  his 
son  to  college  has  the  right  to  expect  that 
he  will  be  guided  gently  if  possible,  but 
firmly  if  need  be,  in  the  establishment  of  his 
ideals.  Left  absolutely  to  themselves  in 
government,  young  men  easily  confuse  lib- 
erty with  license,  and  instead  of  develop- 
115 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

ing  the  self-restraint  essential  to  their  own 
good  and  that  of  society,  they  throw  off  all 
restraint,  thus  weakening  themselves,  while 
they  become  the  terror  of  orderly  society. 
The  real  college  recognizes  that  students 
are  best  governed  by  the  standards  that  are 
placed  before  them  by  those  in  authority. 
If  good  ideals  are  skillfully  presented  they 
appeal  to  the  student,  and  he  yields  that 
ready  response  which  makes  the  self-gov- 
ernment system  a  government  not  of  com- 
pulsion but  of  cheerful  consent.  The  ma- 
turing man  makes  the  first  step  toward  self- 
government — and  it  is  a  step  that  can  not 
be  missed — when  he  yields  consent  of  his 
will  to  be  led  by  those  in  whom  he  has  con- 
fidence. Led  thus  and  encouraged  to  de- 
velop his  own  power  of  initiative,  the  youth 
will  prepare  himself  in  a  normal  way  to  take 
upon  himself  in  due  season  the  responsibil- 
ities of  self-government.  The  sanest  college 
government  is  a  government  of  co-operation. 
When  the  spirit  of  an  institution  is 
healthful  the  students  yield  ready  acqui- 
escence to  its  ideals.  The  infamous  pranks 
116 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

of  a  generation  agone  no  longer  have  a 
place  in  the  plans  of  the  collegian.  There 
is  in  every  sound  yonng  man  a  surplus  of 
animal  spirit,  and  if  this  does  not  exhaust 
itself  properly  under  direction,  it  will  pass 
off  improperly  without  direction.  A  safety- 
valve  is  as  necessary  to  a  young  man  as 
to  a  steam  engine.  The  modern  class-rush, 
which  some  souls  who  seem  never  to  have 
enjoyed  any  youth  for  themselves  in  younger 
years  view  with  unspeakable  horror,  if  prop- 
erly conducted  is  not  only  a  fine  antidote 
for  the  old  wickedness  of  hazing,  but  it  fur- 
nishes, as  well,  a  healthful  outlet  for  super- 
fluous energy.  The  system  of  modern  ath- 
letics, too,  is  a  most  valuable  and  highly 
acceptable  substitute  for  the  lawless  van- 
dalism of  former  years.  The  stealing  of 
the  college  bell,  disfiguring  buildings,  pollut- 
ing wells,  placing  live-stock  in  classrooms 
and  agricultural  implements  on  the  tops  of 
buildings,  shaving  the  tail  of  the  president's 
horse,  and  other  barbarisms,  exist  only  in 
a  few  so-called  colleges  whose  management 
has  not  awakened  to  the  dawn  of  the  twen- 
117 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

tieth  century.  Even  in  the  real  college  there 
is  now  and  then  a  sporadic  case  of  outre 
misconduct,  but  it  is  usually  condemned  by 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  students.  If  the 
story  papers  would  cease  to  print  the  tales 
of  daring  pranks  never  played,  and  if  alumni 
who  graduated  in  a  day  when  a  great  gulf 
was  fixed  between  faculty  and  students  would 
forget  to  recount  at  Commencement  seasons 
and  banquets  the  embellished  tales  of  the 
barbarous  days  when  they  were  students, 
the  little  remaining  tendency  to  senseless 
and  criminal  prankishness  would  speedily 
vanish  and  the  day  of  entire  student  self- 
government  would  be  hastened.  It  is  alarm- 
ing to  discover  how  fertile  in  imagination 
even  the  judicial  mind  may  prove  itself  to 
be  in  a  recital  of  college  capers.  The  writer 
has  heard  in  three  different  colleges  from 
staid  men  whose  reputations  for  sobriety 
and  honesty  at  home  is  unimpeachable,  re- 
count the  story  of  dragging  away  the  presi- 
dent's buggy  from  his  carriage  house  to  an 
obscure  point  miles  away,  and  when  about 
to  take  their  departure  the  students  were 
118 


STUDENTS  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

chagrined  to  hear  the  president  call  out  in 
stentorian  tones  from  beneath  the  robes  in 
which  he  was  bundled  within  the  conveyance, 
ordering  the  boys  to  haul  him  back  home. 
Stranger  than  all  else  in  every  one  of  these 
instances  the  teller  of  this  thrilling  tale  has 
solemnly  declared  at  the  wind-up  that  he 
himself  was  the  leading  participant  in  the 
prank  and  its  humiliating  denouement. 

The  students  of  the  real  college,  studied 
by  their  teachers  as  individuals,  and  encour- 
aged to  find  themselves,  will  profit  by  every 
experience  of  academic  life.  The  work  of 
the  classroom  is  important,  but  the  activities 
of  the  athletic  field,  the  social  life,  the  dia- 
mond-cut-diamond process  that  prevails  in 
the  workshop  of  the  college  lapidary,  are  in- 
valuable and  peculiar  privileges  enjoyed  by 
the  college  man.  Standards  of  scholarship 
are  indispensable.  No  institution  can  af- 
ford, as  a  general  practice,  to  allow  its  good 
name  to  be  jeopardized  by  passing  through 
its  course  those  students  who  do  not  meet 
its  requirements.  A  sharp  distinction  is 
drawn,  however,  by  the  faculty  of  the  real 
119 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

college  between  the  criminal  idler  and  the 
earnest  student  slow  to  learn.  It  has  often 
happened  that  a  yonng  man  apparently 
stupid  in  the  work  of  the  classroom,  but 
otherwise  a  person  of  fine  possibilities,  has 
appeared  as  a  student  in  college.  The  proper 
encouragement  of  such  an  one  by  those 
charged  with  responsibility  may  never  make 
of  that  young  man  a  brilliant  student,  but 
if  he  is  able  to  win  a  bare  passing  credit 
in  his  classes  he  may  become  influential  on 
the  campus,  and  because  of  strength  in  other 
lines  and  the  saturation  of  his  own  life  in 
the  college  atmosphere  he  may  become  a 
typical  college  man  and  in  later  years  a 
credit,  if  not  an  honor,  to  his  Alma  Mater. 
The  students  of  the  real  college  find 
themselves  inspired  by  the  uplift  of  glori- 
ous traditions,  but  living  always  in  close 
touch  with  scholarly  teachers  who  are  in 
sympathy  with  the  spirit  of  modern  thought 
and  progress,  they  are  unhampered  in  real- 
izing the  best  that  the  latest  discovery  has 
to  offer  to  young  souls  ambitious  for  suc- 
cessful service. 

120 


THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL 
COLLEGE 


THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL 
COLLEGE 

The  reading  world  is  familiar  with  the 
statement  of  President  Grarfield  concerning 
Mark  Hopkins,  a  log  and  himself,  so  often 
quoted  that  it  has  become  hackneyed.  The 
underlying  truth  of  this  oft-repeated  senti- 
ment accounts  for  its  persistence.  A  beauti- 
ful fact  as  firmly  established  as  the  power 
of  a  respected  teacher  to  mold  the  life  of 
the  one  he  teaches,  can  never  grow  too  old 
for  the  emphasis  of  repetition. 

The  impress  of  the  college  professor 
upon  students  is  expressed  by  them  in  their 
academic  community  and  is  productive  of 
that  intangible  yet  indispensable  something 
we  call  the  spirit  of  the  institution.  More 
than  that,  it  is  upon  the  professors  of  the 
college,  taken  together  in  that  collective 
group  commonly  called  the  faculty,  that  the 
reputation  of  the  institution  largely  depends. 

It  is  something  more  than  a  matter  for 
123 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

the  present  moment  whether  the  educational 
staff  of  a  given  college  is  ordinary  or  ex- 
traordinary. A  passable  scholarship  and  the 
fairly  good  instruction  of  a  particular  teach- 
ing corps  may  be  of  some  immediate  value 
to  students  because  of  the  fine  character  and 
lofty  moral  conceptions  of  the  individuals 
composing  it,  but  this  is  not  sufficient.  Every 
graduate  of  an  institution  is  limited  in  the 
respect  accorded  him  for  his  education  by 
the  reputation  of  his  Alma  Mater  established 
by  those  who  teach  or  those  who  have  taught 
therein.  The  standing  of  every  alumnus  is 
enhanced  through  the  years  with  every  ad- 
vance movement  of  his  college  secured  by 
the  added  regard  for  the  achievement  of  its 
faculty  in  the  realm  of  the  humanities  or  in 
the  field  of  science.  Comprehensively  de- 
scribed, the  faculty  of  the  real  college  is 
composed  of  virile  men,  tactful,  apt  to  teach, 
able  to  inspire  the  confidence  of  youthhood 
by  their  learning,  their  enthusiasm,  and 
their  lofty  moral  conceptions,  and  competent 
to  command  respect  for  their  scholarship  in 
the  world  of  letters. 

124 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

An  analysis  of  faculty  obligations  in- 
volves first  a  consideration  of  the  relation 
of  faculty  members  to  the  president  of  the 
college.  That  the  responsibilities  of  the 
president  and  his  colleagues  are  at  once 
similar  and  distinct  will  hardly  be  ques- 
tioned. If  the  administrative  work  of  the 
real  college  is  even  approximately  successful 
it  will  be  because  the  duties  of  the  president 
are  shared  by  his  associates.  According  to 
generally  accepted  precedent  in  American 
colleges  an  election  to  a  chair  means  more 
than  a  call  to  the  work  immediately  con- 
nected with  a  certain  line  of  specialized  in- 
struction in  the  institution.  The  professor 
who  accepts  such  an  election  should  under- 
stand that  his  acceptance  involves  the  best 
service  he  can  render  from  his  own  chair, 
plus  a  large  activity  beyond  the  narrow 
limits  of  his  own  special  field,  which  will  con- 
tribute to  the  general  welfare  of  the  insti- 
tution. He  will  understand  that  he  is  ex- 
pected, as  a  matter  of  course,  without  ex- 
plicit contractual  stipulations,  to  attend  all 
faculty  meetings  in  which  he  may  hold  mem- 
125 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

bership,  that  he  is  to  participate  in  the  de- 
liberations of  the  faculty,  and  that  he  is  to 
assume  cheerfully  the  work  of  all  the  com- 
mittees to  which  he  may  be  assigned. 

In  every  student  body  there  are  some 
restless  spirits  who  will  not  respond  to  the 
appeals  that  are  made  to  manhood,  and,  re- 
fusing to  be  controlled  by  modern  methods, 
they  must  needs  be  dealt  with  in  harsher 
manner.  The  problem  of  discipline  in  the 
real  college  will  never  entirely  disappear  so 
long  as  the  coming  man  traces  his  lineage 
from  Adam.  It  is  a  weak  academic  govern- 
ment that  runs  to  the  extreme  of  culpable 
laxity  on  the  one  hand  or  to  undue  severity 
on  the  other.  If  the  college  is  to  produce 
men,  students  inspired  by  the  consciousness 
of  their  own  capabilities  revealed  to  them 
by  skillful  teaching  will,  as  a  rule,  recog- 
nize and  utilize  their  power  of  initiative  in 
work  and  in  character  building.  Knowing 
that  the  highest  type  of  manhood  is  devel- 
oped as  the  result  of  an  awakening  of  this 
consciousness,  college  authorities  anxious  for 
the  best  permanent  results  will  keep  the  goad 
126 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

out  of  sight,  the  emblems  of  authority  hid- 
den, and  penalties  in  the  background.  But 
to  bury  beyond  the  possibility  of  resurrec- 
tion the  "thou  shalt"  and  the  "thou  shalt 
not,"  which  every  man  must  ultimately 
learn — if  he  has  not  learned  it  by  the  telling 
— by  bitter  experience,  is  to  place  the  stamp 
of  criminal  impotency  upon  college  govern- 
ment in  the  making  of  men.  Faculty  mem- 
bers will  assume,  without  shirking,  their  un- 
pleasant parts  in  bearing  the  burden  of  col- 
lege discipline. 

The  curriculum,  the  library,  the  campus, 
the  athletic  field,  the  buildings,  the  equip- 
ment, and  the  organizations  of  the  college 
are  all  so  vital  to  the  effectiveness  of  the 
college  that  the  members  of  the  educational 
staff  can  hardly  escape  sharing  with  the 
president  an  interest  in  each  and  all  of  them. 

No  one  will  question  the  right  of  faculty 
members  to  advise  the  president.  Indeed,  if 
he  is  as  wise  as  such  an  official  should  be, 
he  will  seek  the  counsel  of  his  associates,  and 
knowing  that  "in  the  multitude  of  counsel- 
ors there  is  safety,"  he  will  be  ready  to 
127 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

modify  his  plans  and  policies  after  hearing 
from  his  colleagues.  The  right  to  advise 
does  not,  however,  include  within  it  the  pre- 
rogative of  censorious  criticism.  Next  to  a 
despotic  egotist  in  the  presidency  the  most 
obstructive  hindrance  to  the  growth  of  a 
healthful  spirit  in  a  given  college  is  a  coterie 
of  professors  painfully  sycophantic  in  the 
presence  of  their  lord  and  master,  and  bit- 
terly denunciatory  of  him  when  left  to  them- 
selves. It  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  a  more 
painful  caricature  on  true  manliness  than 
that  made  up  by  a  little  professorial  group 
gathered  together  in  a  darkened  corridor  or 
behind  a  building,  gesticulating  wildly 
against  the  administration,  unless  it  be  the 
same  small  crowd  in  the  study  of  one  of  the 
number,  or  in  a  clubroom  planning  surrep- 
titiously for  the  overthrow  of  their  chief. 

The  president  of  one  of  the  larger  State 
universities  of  the  Central  West  was  appar- 
ently highly  esteemed  by  all  those  who 
served  with  him,  but  when  he  resigned,  a 
prominent  professor,  too  cowardly  to  be 
other  than  obsequious  while  he  thought  the 
128 


FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

tenure  of  the  president  permanent,  re- 
marked, "Well,  there  is  certainly  a  great 
ground-swell  of  relief  among  the  faculty  now 
that  we  are  to  be  relieved  of  the  incubus  of 
this  administration. ' '  Such  reprehensible 
hypocrisy,  nourished  by  those  who  teach, 
can  not  but  exert  a  blighting  influence,  even 
though  it  be  unconscious,  upon  the  life  of 
the  institution  as  a  whole. 

An  American  college  without  a  respon- 
sible head — let  it  be  repeated — be  he  known 
as  chancellor,  president,  or  by  any  title  what- 
soever, is  like  a  ship  without  a  pilot.  The 
crew  is  indispensable,  but  let  them  work 
never  so  unceasingly  and  unselfishly,  ship- 
wreck will  inevitably  come  if  there  be  no  one 
at  the  wheel.  It  is  true  that  an  unskilled 
or  headstrong  helmsman  may  run  the  vessel 
on  rocks  or  sandbar.  In  a  recent  contribu- 
tion to  Science  under  the  caption,  "The 
Ideal  University  Administration, ' '  Profes- 
sor Kent,  of  Syracuse  University,  introduces 
his  article  by  saying: 

1 1  The  recent  controversy  in  Syracuse  Uni- 
versity is  one  that  is  of  far  more  impor- 
9  129 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

tance  to  the  educational  interests  of  the  conn- 
try  than  a  mere  qnarrel  between  two  indi- 
viduals. It  is  a  symptom  of  disease  which, 
to  some  extent,  is  common  in  many  univer- 
sities ;  that  is,  the  government  of  a  university 
by  a  single  autocrat,  supported  in  power  by 
a  body  of  absent  trustees  who  are  not  edu- 
cational experts.  The  time  is  ripe  for  a  gen- 
eral study  of  university  administration." 

With  no  more  than  this  broad  hint  as  to 
recent  troubles  at  home,  the  author  branches 
out  into  a  presentation  of  his  own  notions 
as  to  the  ideal  university  and  its  govern- 
ment. After  a  somewhat  vague  elaboration 
of  his  theories  he  concludes  his  article  with 
the  categorical  assertion  that  "  under  such 
a  government  strong  men  could  be  secured 
to  fill  the  professors'  chairs;  they  would  be 
secure  in  their  positions  as  long  as  they  did 
their  duty,  and  such  a  disgraceful  proceed- 
ing as  the  one  that  has  just  taken  place  at 
Syracuse  would  be  impossible." 

Without  any  attempt  to  analyze  in  detail 
the  motives  that  have  prompted  this  article, 
let  it  be  said,  in  passing,  that  it  is  impos- 

130 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

sible  to  escape  the  conviction  that  the  ani- 
mus of  the  argument  in  the  body  of  the  pro- 
duction seems  to  be  revealed  in  the  caustic 
reference  to  unpleasant  conditions  at  home 
in  opening,  and  in  the  bitter  allusion  to  the 
local  troubles  in  concluding. 

In-so-far  as  Dean  Kent  seeks  to  establish 
general  principles  that  shall  govern  insti- 
tutions other  than  his  own,  his  theory  of 
university  administration  is  worthy  of  se- 
rious study.  What  he  has  to  say  of  univer- 
sity government  is  equally  applicable  to  the 
government  of  a  college.  He  has  given  ex- 
pression to  a  feeling  of  unrest  that  is  dis- 
turbing the  peace  of  mind  of  more  than  one 
college  professor  in  America  to-day.  In 
common  with  many  of  his  kind,  he  is  crying 
out  for  emancipation  from  a  tyranny  that 
is  becoming  too  common.  He  wants  the 
freedom  that  numerous  other  college  pro- 
fessors feel  to  be  their  indisputable  right. 
The  incompleteness  of  his  premises,  how- 
ever, makes  acceptance  of  his  conclusions 
impossible.  After  denning  a  university  as  a 
"congregation  of  students  and  teachers,'?  he 
131 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

limits  the  constitution  of  a  university  in  its 
origin   to    one   of   three   methods,   namely: 

(1)  A  body  of  students  of  legal  age  estab- 
lishing a  corporation,  hiring  their  own  teach- 
ers, framing  a  set  of  by-laws  and  erecting 
and    furnishing    buildings    and    equipment; 

(2)  a  body  composed  exclusively  of  teachers 
forming  an  organization,  electing  themselves 
as  officers,  issuing  stock,  renting  or  erecting 
buildings  and  furnishing  them,  and  adver- 
tising for  students;  or  (3)  a  single  rich  man 
furnishing  money,  forming  a  corporation 
with  four  dummy  stockholders,  giving  them 
one  share  of  stock  each,  erecting  buildings, 
providing  the  necessary  equipment,  hiring 
teachers,  advertising  for  students,  and  be- 
ginning the  business  of  furnishing  educa- 
tion for  tuition  fees. 

To  attempt  to  restrict  a  college  or  uni- 
versity to  one  of  these  three  foundations 
named  by  Professor  Kent  is  to  run  counter 
to  the  facts  of  history  in  American  academic 
establishment.  It  is  to  reduce  higher  edu- 
cation in  our  country  to  the  level  of  a  mere 
socialistic  organization  or  a  mercenary  com- 
132 


FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

mercial  enterprise.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
is  well  known  that  there  are  no  colleges  or 
universities  of  note  in  the  New  World  formed 
altogether  by  students.  The  work  of  higher 
education  this  side  the  sea  has  not  to  any- 
successful  degree  been  a  mere  money-making 
business.  To  be  sure,  in  a  few  instances 
bodies  of  teachers  have  associated  them- 
selves together  to  form  so-called  normal 
schools,  and  for  a  little  time,  by  advertising 
their  "get  educated  quick"  schemes,  they 
have  been  successful  in  duping  hundreds  of 
unsophisticated  youth  into  seeking  educa- 
tional advantages  where  they  were  not  to 
be  found. 

It  has  often  happened,  too,  particularly 
in  the  far  West,  that  a  railroad  company 
or  a  real  estate  corporation,  to  increase 
travel  or  to  develop  a  town  site,  has  estab- 
lished a  so-called  college  to  help  on  the  sale 
of  building  lots.  There  have  been  a  few 
scattered  attempts  by  single  individuals  to 
found  institutions  of  learning  for  personal 
financial  profit.  None  of  these  ventures  by 
teachers,  by  land  agents,  or  individual  spec- 
133 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

ulators  have,  however,  been  regarded  by  the 
public  in  general  as  serions  educational  ef- 
forts, and  certainly  the  institutions  they 
have  founded  have  led,  in  nearly  every  case, 
so  precarious  an  existence  and  have  been  of 
such  doubtful  value  that  those  engaged  in 
real  college  and  university  work  have  never 
recognized  them. 

The  real  college  in  America  is  not  a 
money-making  institution.  It  is,  from  the 
standpoint  of  immediate  returns  in  dollars 
and  cents,  a  money-losing  project.  Schools 
of  higher  learning,  of  the  best  type,  to-day 
are  charitable  institutions.  They  have  not 
originated  in  any  one  of  these  three  ways 
suggested  by  Professor  Kent  as  essential  to 
the  formation  of  a  university.  The  colleges 
of  our  land  are  the  outgrowth  of  a  com- 
mendable and  unselfish  paternalism.  The 
Church  at  great  sacrifice  has  established  and 
maintained  many  of  the  best  of  them.  The 
States  have  realized  the  responsibility  rest- 
ing upon  government  for  the  proper  train- 
ing of  the  sovereign  people  who  compose  a 
democratic  government  and  have  subsidized 
134 


FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

with  public  funds  colleges  and  universities 
which  challenge  the  respect  of  the  world.  It 
is  true  that  Church  colleges  have  received 
in  some  cases  large  benefactions  from  men 
of  wealth,  but  no  man  has  ever  made  large 
gifts  to  any  such  institution  expecting  that 
he  would  receive  the  same  sort  of  return 
thereon  that  would  be  his  by  investment  in 
"Standard  Oil"  or  "Steel"  stock.  In  this 
latter  day  it  is  true  that  many  institutions 
of  learning,  denominational  in  origin  and,  at 
times  in  their  existence  strongly  sectarian, 
are  breaking  away  in  greater  or  lesser  meas- 
ure from  the  dependence  upon  Church  sup- 
port. As  a  strong  body  of  loyal  alumni 
grows  up  about  a  particular  institution  the 
Church  is  relieved  from  the  obligation  of 
maintenance  and  the  devoted  graduates  as- 
sume the  responsibility  for  support.  Even 
State  supported  institutions  after  some  years 
of  existence  come  to  look  to  former  students 
for  sympathetic  help  as  a  necessity.  While 
such  schools  never  get  beyond  the  necessity 
of  State  appropriations,  yet  former  students 
and  graduates  are  their  most  valuable  as- 
135 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

sets.  It  is  upon  those  they  have  taught  that 
State  colleges  and  universities  must  depend 
for  influence  in  securing  needed  govern- 
mental help,  and  such  institutions  in  many 
instances  are  not  opposed  to  supplementing 
the  support  received  through  public  taxation 
with  individual  gifts  from  loving  sons  and 
patriotic  friends.  Church  colleges  share  the 
support  they  receive  from  members  of  the 
Church  with  their  graduates.  The  alumni 
of  State  institutions  join  with  the  citizens 
of  the  State  at  large  in  justly  claiming  the 
rights  of  partners  in  the  ownership  of  their 
Alma  Mater.  It  is  clear,  then,  that  the  re- 
sponsibility of  professors  in  standard  col- 
leges and  universities  is  not  to  themselves 
and  their  students  alone.  It  is  to  the  Church 
in  some  cases.  In  other  instances  it  is  to  the 
Church  and  its  graduates  and  the  State.  In 
all  cases  it  is  to  the  public  at  large.  No  col- 
lege worthy  of  the  name  could  exist  with- 
out a  paternalistic  prop  outside  of  itself. 
Colleges  and  universities  are  institutions  for 
public  service.  It  is  unthinkable  in  this, 
country,  at  any  rate,  that  the  right  of  direc- 
136 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

tion  lies  altogether  with  those  resident  in 
the  academic  commnnity,  as  Professor  Kent 
maintains.  As  well  absolve  the  pastor  of  a 
flock  or  the  governor  of  the  commonwealth 
from  all  responsibility  for  official  conduct  to 
any  one  but  himself,  as  to  claim  freedom 
from  responsibility  for  educational  policies 
and  efficiency  to  those  living  beyond  the 
boundaries  of  the  campus. 

In  further  elaboration  of  his  "  Ideal  Uni- 
versity Administration''  the  author  named 
declares  that  "the  best  system  for  a  univer- 
sity is  neither  the  boss  nor  the  czar  system; 
not  mob  rule,  but  a  carefully  planned  system 
of  representative  government,  of  which  the 
United  States  is  a  model.' '  He  further  rec- 
ommends a  university  senate  or  council,  and 
rather  grudgingly  concedes  that  there  may 
be  a  president  or  chancellor  elected  by  the 
trustees  who  is  to  represent  the  university 
on  all  public  occasions.  "If  the  president 
is  a  money-getter  and  an  orator,"  he  says, 
"so  much  the  better;  but  whatever  he  is, 
it  is  not  wise  to  give  him  autocratic  power 
over  the  faculties,  nor  over  the  council.' [ 
137 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

Professor  George  Malcolm  Stratton,  of 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  with  apparent  ab- 
sence of  personal  piqne  and  with  greater  dig- 
nity gives  expression  to  the  feelings  that  pos- 
sess many  of  his  contemporaries  in  American 
universities.  His  "Externalism  in  Ameri- 
can Universities, ' '  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly 
of  October,  1907,  is  a  strong  argument  for 
revolution  in  the  American  system  of  college 
government,  and  his  conclusions  seem  al- 
most incontrovertible.  It  is  unfair  to  quote 
any  portion  of  this  genuine  contribution  to 
the  literature  of  college  idealism  as  compre- 
hending the  whole  of  his  argument.  And  yet 
it  seems  possible  that  he  has  voiced  a  well- 
nigh  universal  professorial  opinion  in  say- 
ing: 

1  '  The  American  university  president  holds 
a  place  unique  in  the  history  of  higher  edu- 
cation. He  is  a  ruler  responsible  to  no  one 
whom  he  governs,  and  he  holds  for  an  in- 
definite term  the  powers  of  academic  life  and 
death.  Subject  to  the  formal  approval  of 
the  trustees,  he  selects  new  members  of  the 
faculty,  promotes,  dismisses  them.  To  the 
faculty,  it  is  true,  there  seems  to  be  left  the 
138 


FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

important  power  to  define  the  requirements 
for  admission  to  the  university  and  to  its  de- 
grees, and  yet  these  activities  are,  in  a  fun- 
damental way,  directed  by  the  president, 
since  by  his  word  comes  growth  to  this  de- 
partment and  atrophy  to  that.  And  while 
his  sway  is  subject  to  a  constitution,  and  he 
can  not  quite  justly  be  called  an  autocrat, 
nevertheless  the  charter  brings  to  him,  per- 
haps, less  serious  restrictions  than  those 
which  often,  in  the  larger  world,  would  bind 
men  who  bear  the  name  of  emperor. ' ' 

That  the  love  of  power  for  its  own  sake 
is  more  dangerous  than  the  love  of  money 
for  its  own  sake  is  an  assertion  that  will 
hardly  be  questioned.  It  is  utterly  repug- 
nant to  our  national  notions  of  democracy 
to  tolerate  an  arrant  bossism  even  in  politi- 
cal affairs.  Much  more  offensive  is  an  im- 
perious dictatorship  when  it  brandishes  its 
scepter  in  the  ecclesiastical  domain.  Most 
unendurable  of  all  is  it  when  it  dominates 
an  academic  community. 

That  there  are  those  in  the  political  world 
who  give  their  orders  simply  for  the  joy  of 
witnessing  an  abject  obedience  from  cring- 
139 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

ing  subjects  is  a  conclusion  that  seems  en- 
tirely warranted  by  superficial  observation. 
There  are  bishops  of  the  Church  who  re- 
move and  exchange  priests  and  preachers 
and  run  contrary  to  the  wishes  of  congrega- 
tions simply,  it  would  seem,  to  show  that 
they  can  do  these  things.  It  must  be  admit- 
ted that  there  are  also  some  educational 
autocrats  in  the  land  of  the  living  who  cher- 
ish their  official  power  as  the  most  priceless 
of  all  their  possessions.  At  every  great  edu- 
cational gathering  it  is  possible  to  hear  some 
petty  village  principal  or  some  vainglori- 
ous city  superintendent  exalting  the  perpen- 
dicular personal  pronoun  as  he  stands  among 
a  group  of  those  whom  he  imagines  to  be 
his  admirers  while  he  explains  the  skillful 
and  effective  way  he  has  of  using  the  ax. 
At  gatherings  of  college  men  one  may  occa- 
sionally hear  a  diminutive  college  president 
with  magnified  opinions  of  his  own  superior 
wisdom  boast  of  his  ruthless  disregard  of 
faculty  instructions  and  tell  of  his  many 
successful  feats  in  administering  discipline 
to  his  recalcitrant  colleagues.  It  is  a  safe 
140 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

statement,  however,  that  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  school  superintendents  and  col- 
lege presidents  in  the  United  States  are  not 
of  such  sort. 

Most  men  do  not  reach  positions  of  col- 
lege authority  by  a  single  leap  from  the 
graduate  school.  As  a  rule  the  college  pres- 
ident grows  into  his  larger  responsibility. 
A  study  of  the  biographies  of  those  engaged 
in  the  work  of  higher  educational  adminis- 
tration in  our  own  country  will  disclose  the 
fact  that  most  of  them  have  taken  all  the 
intermediate  steps  and  have  come  up  by  the 
hard  way  of  earned  promotions.  Nearly  all 
college  presidents  serve  apprenticeships  as 
tutors  and  instructors  and  find  their  way  to 
the  honor  of  departmental  chairs  before  they 
are  drafted  for  institutional  headship.  In 
the  main,  they  are  men  who  have  been  tested 
in  the  ranks,  and  the  recognition  of  their 
worth  by  their  associates  has  won  them  the 
call  to  presidential  duties.  Such  men  by  ex- 
perimental knowledge  must,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  have  large  sympathy,  not  only  with 
the  members  of  the  student  body,  but  with 
141 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

their  subordinates  of  all  grades  in  the  fac- 
ulty. 

If  here  and  there  a  college  president  for- 
gets his  obligations  as  the  servant  of  all  and 
becomes  lordly,  it  does  not  follow  that  there 
should  be  universal  abolition  of  the  college 
presidency.  Indeed,  it  is  impossible  to  con- 
ceive of  a  live  college  in  this  country  with- 
out a  chief  official  performing  functions  sim- 
ilar to  those  we  have  come  to  regard  as  the 
work  of  a  president.  The  American  college 
is  entirely  different  from  the  European  in- 
stitution. Its  mission  is  not  narrow,  but 
broad.  Its  responsibility  is  not  to  the  few 
scholars  composing  a  certain  academic  com- 
munity, but  to  the  multiplied  thousands  out- 
side the  college  halls.  In  the  New  World 
the  college  exists  not  for  the  benefit  of  the 
few  favored  ones,  but  for  the  service  of  the 
whole  race  of  men. 

It  has  already  been  shown  that  the  few 
trials  of  acephalous  college  government  in 
this  country  have  resulted  in  confessed  fail- 
ure. It  has  been  demonstrated  that  there 
is  necessity  for  some  one  very  much  alive, 
142 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

at  the  head  of  every  public  institution,  to 
whom  the  supporting  public  may  look  for  a 
proper  accounting,  and  he  in  turn  must  have 
those  accountable  to  him,  that  he,  with  their 
help,  may  make  satisfactory  report  of  insti- 
tutional stewardship  to  those  whom  the  in- 
stitution exists  to  serve. 

To  declare  against  centralized  authority 
in  our  colleges  is  to  run  counter  to  the  spirit 
of  our  own  times.  Finding  that  multiplica- 
tion of  offices  has  contributed  chiefly  to  the 
building  of  corrupt  political  machines  but- 
tressed by  henchmen  who  fatten  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  people,  and  that  distribution  of 
responsibility  in  municipal  affairs  has  re- 
sulted in  a  constantly  increasing  inefficiency 
in  public  service,  many  cities  are  now  seek- 
ing to  find  methods  by  which  authority  may 
be  concentrated  and  responsibility  located. 
A  very  careful  editorial  writer  in  The  Out- 
look has  recently  said  that  "in  spite  of  the 
natural  conservatism  of  cities  the  so-called 
' Galveston  Plan'  of  municipal  government 
continues  to  make  headway.  The  plan,  it 
will  be  recalled,  is  based  upon  the  principle 
143 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

of  centralizing  power  and  responsibility.  It 
provides  for  the  abolition  of  the  ward  alder- 
man and  for  the  concentrating  of  executive 
and  legislative  functions  in  a  board  of  five 
men  elected  on  a  general  ticket,  each  of  whom 
becomes  the  head  of  a  department."  Two 
of  the  great  trans-Mississippi  States  have 
recently,  by  legislative  enactment,  made  it 
possible  for  their  cities  to  adopt  a  modified 
Galveston  plan. ' '  Fort  Worth,  Dallas,  Hous- 
ton, and  El  Paso,  all  inspired  by  the  suc- 
cess of  their  sister  city  of  the  same  State, 
have  adopted  the  "Commission  Plan"  of 
municipal  government.  Leavenworth,  Des 
Moines,  and  Cedar  Eapids,  as  the  result  of 
the  adoption  of  this  plan,  testify  to  an  in- 
creased efficiency  in  public  service  at  a 
greatly  reduced  cost.  The  rising  young  city 
of  Tulsa,  in  the  State  of  Oklahoma,  is  one 
of  the  latest  converts  to  the  centralization 
of  accountability  provided  by  the  Commis- 
sion System.  Such  eminent  students  as  Pro- 
fessor Albert  Bushnell  Hart,  of  Harvard 
University,  and  Professor  Sparling,  of  the 
University  of  "Wisconsin,  have  commended 
144 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

the  "Commission  Plan"  for  its  simplicity 
and  the  noteworthy  results  already  attained 
under  it.  It  may  be  well,  in  passing,  to  em- 
phasize the  fact  that  these  distinguished  men 
who  place  their  seal  of  approval  on  concen- 
trated authority  in  municipalities  are  them- 
selves members  of  faculties  in  great  univer- 
sities widely  separated,  but  both  of  which 
are  constantly  growing  in  greatness  of  repu- 
tation and  power  for  service,  under  authority 
centralized  in  presidents  to  whose  efficient 
leadership  the  whole  world  to-day  pays  trib- 
ute. Concentration  of  authority  in  city, 
State,  and  national  government  is  recog- 
nized to-day  as  the  one  thing  to  be  desired 
above  all  others  for  economy  and  efficiency, 
and  it  is  pertinent  to  inquire  why  a  simi- 
larly centralized  direction  would  not  work  to 
greater  advantage  in  college  administration 
than  the  divided  responsibility  which,  in  the 
few  institutions  in  which  it  has  been  at- 
tempted, has  resulted  in  wretched  failure. 

Bearing  in  mind  that  the  real  college  is 
not  self-supporting,  that  it  is  a  charitable 
concern  existing  for  the  service  of  the  pub- 
10  145 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

lie,  is  it  not  reasonable  that  there  shonld  be 
some  one  to  be  held  directly  responsible  for 
its  success  or  failure?  It  is  inconceivable 
that,  for  any  ordinary  incapability,  members 
of  a  self-constituted  faculty  would  vote  to 
put  one  of  their  own  number  out  of  service. 
There  is,  at  all  events,  a  modicum  of  human 
nature  in  college  professors.  A  care  for  indi- 
vidual interests,  if  there  were  no  considera- 
tions of  fraternal  courtesy  to  govern,  would 
certainly  encourage  a  reciprocal  indulgence 
of  peculiarities  and  faults,  if  not  a  total  un- 
fitness, inimical  to  the  best  service  of  the  col- 
lege. For  the  professors,  rather  than  the 
trustees,  to  elect  the  president  of  an  educa- 
tional institution,  as  urged  by  Professor 
Stratton,  would  be  to  provide  a  still  stronger 
protection  for  professorial  inefficiency.  Never 
in  the  history  of  the  world  has  there  lived  a 
man  who  has  found  his  largest  incentive  to 
endeavor  within  himself.  The  best  man  does 
his  best  when  he  is  spurred  to  effort  by  the 
knowledge  that  he  is  accountable  for  all  that 
he  does  or  fails  to  do  to  some  one  else.  It  is 
to  claim  the  existence  of  a  perfected  order 
146 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

of  manhood  such  as  the  sun  has  never  shone 
on  to  maintain  that  any  considerable  num- 
ber of  human  beings  will  work  to  their  limit 
from  love  of  work.  It  will  be  readily  granted 
that  men  do  work  well  because  they  are  in- 
terested in  tasks  they  have  set  for  them- 
selves, but  their  effectiveness  is  accentuated 
by  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  they  are  re- 
sponsible to  others  as  well  as  to  themselves. 
Those  who  have  inside  knowledge  will  admit 
that  they  have  known  college  professors  who 
were  insufferably  lazy.  There  are  those  who 
have  won  some  fame  that  are  prone  to  rest 
on  their  laurels.  Left  to  follow  their  own 
inclinations,  these  self-satisfied  teachers,  in- 
stead of  bringing  to  students  and  the  larger 
public  the  inspiration  of  a  growing  life, 
would  hand  them  the  husks  of  a  spent  glory. 
To  do  all  that  we  may  do,  every  one  of  us 
must  be  kept  under  the  lash. 

A  college  or  university  without  a  central- 
ized control  never  can  be  a  "  union  of  gifted 
persons  working  together  to  increase  the 
store  of  intelligence  among  men."  More 
than  that,  there  never  has  been  a  competent 
147 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

academic  community  working  on  a  purely- 
socialistic  basis.  A  president  elected  by  the 
professors  and  subject  to  their  dismissal 
when  a  mere  majority  of  them  find  he  will 
not  do  their  bidding  would  be  an  impotent 
puppet. 

The  same  human  frailties  that  are  com- 
mon to  college  professors  are  also  found  in 
college  presidents.  If,  though,  a  man  of 
broad  vision,  of  great  .heart,  of  scholarly 
perspicacity  and  successful  experience  can 
be  found — and  there  are  some  such — to 
whom  the  direction  of  a  given  college  is  en- 
trusted, he  will  accomplish  more  in  com- 
pelling it  to  become  a  mighty  factor  for 
good  among  men,  within  a  few  years,  than 
could  be  accomplished  without  such  cen- 
tralized direction  in  many  decades.  A  pres- 
ident of  this  sort,  himself  goaded  to  his  most 
earnest  endeavor  by  the  responsibility  he 
owes  to  the  board  of  trustees,  who  are  his 
employers,  and  by  a  constituency  who  de- 
mands from  him  results  as  the  price  of  his 
continuance  in  office,  will  gather  about  him 
as  his  co-laborers  in  college  work  the  best 
148 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

faculty  the  funds  at  his  command  will  allow. 
No  one  knows  better  than  the  wise  college 
president  that  his  own  fitness  for  his  post 
is  best  demonstrated  by  his  ability  to  find 
and  keep  a  strong  educational  staff.  Per- 
manency of  tenure  is  a  matter  of  self-pres- 
ervation and,  if  for  no  other  reason,  demands 
that  he  hold  every  professor  who  proves 
himself  worthy.  Under  such  a  president  ev- 
ery member  of  the  faculty  will  feel  himself 
secure  so  long  as  he  does  his  whole  duty. 
When  he  fails  in  doing  his  full  duty  there  is 
one  in  authority  who,  knowing  his  own  re- 
sponsibility for  the  efficiency  of  the  college, 
will  have  the  courage  to  recommend  a  dis- 
missal, which  could  not  come  under  a  com- 
munistic government.  Professional  para- 
sites are  hostile  to  college  vitality.  They 
will  not  have  the  chance  to  sap  the  life-blood 
of  an  institution  which  has  a  courageous 
president  who  knows  he  will  be  held  answer- 
able for  institutional  impotence,  superin- 
duced by  premature  professorial  senility. 
An  indolent  teacher  here  and  there,  dis- 
charged by  recommendation  of  a  brave  pres- 
149 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

ident,  may  have  a  grievance  against  such  a 
president,  but  the  generations  will  be  debtor 
to  him. 

The  college  executive  who  wields  the  "big 
stick"  simply  to  find  pleasure  in  hearing  the 
blow  fall,  will  soon  be  discovered  and  will 
thereby  contribute  to  his  own  speedy  de- 
thronement. Professors  working  with  the 
average  college  president  will  not  be  re- 
stricted in  their  freedom.  Their  counsel  will 
be  frequently  sought  by  him.  They  will  dare 
to  speak  their  minds  frankly  to  him  in  the 
privacy  of  his  own  office  or  study  and  pub- 
licly in  committees  and  faculty  meetings.  He 
will  recognize  that  a  college  faculty  is  a  de- 
liberative body,  and  he  will  bow  to  the  ex- 
pressed will  of  the  majority  on  all  questions 
that  are  submitted  to  them  as  their  guaran- 
teed right  to  decide.  He  will  reserve  to 
himself  only  such  plenary  authority  as  is 
necessary  to  establish  and  maintain  policies 
for  which  he  is,  in  the  main,  held  responsi- 
ble. Showing  himself  fraternal  and  sympa- 
thetic to  his  colleagues,  he  will  be  supported 
by  them  when  it  is  necessary  for  him,  in  the 
150 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

interest  of  the  institution,  to  take  extreme 
action.  He  will  be  their  advocate  and  de- 
fender in  every  just  cause.  The  ideal  col- 
lege government  consists  of  a  capable,  fear- 
less president  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the 
other  it  is  a  scholarly,  public-spirited  faculty, 
both  working  in  sympathetic  co-operation  as 
servants  of  humanity.  It  is  because  we  have 
many  such  ideal  systems  of  academic  govern- 
ment that  the  American  college  is  to-day  the 
best  the  world  has  ever  known. 

But  members  of  a  college  faculty  are  re- 
lated to  each  other  in  a  way  vital  to  the  wel- 
fare of  themselves  and  their  institution.  I 
have  heard  of  bitterly  opposing  factions  in 
college-governing  bodies,  but  I  have  never 
known  of  an  institution  in  which  such  a  state 
of  affairs  had  actual  existence.  It  is  always 
possible  to  hear  of  an  institution  where  there 
is  lack  of  harmony,  but  the  institution  is  al- 
ways in  some  other  town,  city,  or  State.  It 
is  safe  to  affirm  that  a  college  faculty  rent 
with  internal  dissensions  could  have  no  par- 
allel in  misery  outside  the  hateful  jealousies 
that  make  for  perpetual  woe  in  an  Oriental 
151 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

harem.  College  professors  are  members  of 
an  educational  family,  and  the  respect  and 
consideration  shown  for  one  another  and  for 
all  will  not  only  contribute  to  individual  hap- 
piness and  effectiveness,  but  to  the  esteem 
in  which  all  teachers  are  held  by  those  who 
are  taught.  Nothing  is  more  desirable  in 
the  college  world  than  the  inculcation  in  stu- 
dents of  a  high  regard  for  the  manliness 
of  scholarship;  and  when  faculty  colleagues 
invariably  speak  well  of  each  other  and  show 
genuine  appreciation  of  the  character  and 
achievements  of  their  associates,  they  fix  a 
lofty  ideal  of  learning  in  the  minds  of  their 
student  constituency.  The  real  college  is  a 
republic  of  letters,  where  every  member 
gives  himself,  without  stint,  in  earnest  co- 
operation to  the  cultivation  of  a  public  sen- 
timent healthful  to  noble  character  and  gen- 
uine scholarship,  and  the  American  college 
is  preponderantly  of  this  splendid  type. 

If  the  terms  college  and  university  in  this 
discussion  have  been  used  interchangeably 
and  synonymously,  let  it  be  pleaded  in  justifi- 
cation therefor  that  in  many  respects  their 
152 


FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

mission  and  their  functions  are  identical.  In 
respect  to  these  points  of  similarity  a  criti- 
cism passed  on  one  would  apply  with  equal 
force  to  the  other.  There  is  a  field,  though, 
which  belongs  distinctively  to  the  college, 
and  which  the  university,  by  reason  of  its 
very  bigness,  can  not  enter.  This  is  the  field 
of  personal  contact  of  teachers  and  students, 
which  the  smallness  of  the  real  college  per- 
mits it  to  occupy  as  its  exclusive  domain.  It 
is,  then,  in  the  relations  maintained  by  fac- 
ulty members  to  their  students  in  the  real 
college  that  their  true  worth  is  determined. 
In  a  recent  issue  of  the  New  York  Even- 
ing Post,  under  the  caption,  "The  College 
Grindstone,"  a  severe  indictment  is  lodged 
against  the  American  college  professor.  The 
opening  statement  is  the  alarmingly  em- 
phatic declaration  that  "the  recently  pub- 
lished 'Life  and  Letters  of  Sir  Eichard 
J  ebb'  must  fill  the  occupants  of  academic 
chairs  in  America  with  envious  despair.' ■ 
With  characteristic  Anglo-maniacal  admira- 
tion, in  immediate  succession  to  the  fore- 
going sentence,  we  are  told  that  "this  pic- 
153 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

ture  of  a  life  of  a  college  professor  in 
Great  Britain  is  far  different  from  that  of 
a  college  professor  in  America."  With 
such  premises  it  is  not  hard  to  anticipate 
the  conclusion  of  this  arraignment.  The 
writer  has  adopted  as  his  own  a  common 
error  of  our  own  times.  He  assumes,  with 
many  others,  that  the  chief  business  of 
the  college  professor  is  that  of  a  producer. 
According  to  this  all  too  prevalent  notion  the 
teacher  in  the  modern  college  who  fails  to 
contribute  to  the  technical  journals  of  his 
special  line  or  to  literature  in  general  is  a 
pitiable  failure.  Apparently  the  indignation 
of  this  editorial  writer  grows  by  what  it  feeds 
upon,  for,  proceeding,  he  says : 

"In  America  this  notion  of  the  scholar  and 
man  of  letters  combined  in  one  person  is  but 
dimly  conceived  by  most  members  of  the 
academic  body:  and  it  has  apparently  never 
entered  the  heads  of  many  college  trustees." 

He  bemoans  the  fact  that,  though  we  have 
had  among  our  college  professors  a  Long- 
fellow and  a  Lowell,  "the  vast  majority  can 

154 


FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

hope  to  be  nothing  more  than  competent 
teachers  and  editors  of  useful  text-books — a 
respectable  but  not  inspiring  career.' ' 

"  Nothing  more  than  competent  teach- 
ers !"  Shades  of  Socrates,  Pestalozzi,  and 
Arnold  of  Rugby,  what  an  inpeachment! 
Socrates  wrote  nothing,  but  as  the  teacher 
of  Alcibiades  and  the  Athenian  youth  he 
has  lived  to  a  day  that  reaches  centuries 
away  from  the  hemlock  cup.  Pestalozzi 
wrote  "Leonard  and  Gertrude,"  but  it  re- 
flects his  experience  gained  by  eating,  drink- 
ing, sleeping,  suffering,  and  rejoicing  with 
the  little  children  who  loved  him  as  their 
teacher.  The  intellectual  faculties  of  Doc- 
tor Arnold  did  not  surpass  those  of  many  of 
his  contemporaries,  and  in  scholarship  he 
occupied  a  subordinate  place  to  many  of  his 
associates.  As  has  been  truly  observed,  "his 
'Thucydides,'  his  history,  his  sermons,  and 
miscellaneous  writings  are  all  proofs  of  his 
ability  and  goodness,  and  yet  the  story  of 
his  own  life  is  worth  them  all."  The  record 
of  his  career  is  a  fulfillment  of  the  prophecy, 
"If  elected  Master  of  Rugby,  he  would 
155 


THE  KEAL  COLLEGE 

change  the  face  of  education  all  through  the 
public  schools  of  England.' '  It  was  only  a 
few  words  in  the  quick-shifting  sands,  ob- 
literated by  the  winds  before  the  setting  of 
the  sun,  that  were  written  by  Him  who 
taught  in  the  unroofed  schoolroom  of  Gali- 
lee, and  yet  His  teachings  have  transformed 
nations,  and  the  truth  He  inculcated  goes 
marching  on  against  the  coming  of  the  day 
of  a  perfected  civilization. 

From  the  days  of  Socrates  and  the  Car- 
penter's Son  down  to  the  present,  in  elemen- 
tary school  and  college,  there  have  been  hun- 
dreds of  those  who  have  been  "nothing  more 
than  competent  teachers,"  whose  lives  of 
high  scholarship,  of  fine  culture,  and  lofty 
character  have  contributed,  as  nothing  else 
in  the  world  has  done,  to  the  making  of  use- 
ful and  happy  lives.  To  be  "nothing  more 
than  competent  teachers"  will  not  mean  the 
writing  of  the  names  of  the  teachers  high  on 
the  scroll  of  eternal  fame,  but  it  will  mean 
more  than  that;  it  will  mean  the  writing  of 
imperishable  principles  on  the  plastic  tab- 
lets of  youthful  character,  and  these  will 
156 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

crystallize  into  monuments  that  will  outlast 
memorials  of  bronze  and  marble,  enduring 
in  the  heaven  of  heavens  forever. 

It  should  never  be  forgotten  that  the  best 
product  of  any  school  is  not  a  book,  but  a 
man.  It  is  painful  to  contemplate  the  am- 
bition of  too  many  new-fledged  doctors  of 
philosophy  seeking  educational  positions, 
whose  ambition  is  not  to  teach  but  to  write. 
Many  of  them  look  with  contempt  on  teach- 
ing, while  they  pine  for  the  honors  of  author- 
ship. It  is  beyond  the  limits  of  conjecture 
how  many  good  teachers  have  been  spoiled 
by  an  ambition  which  has  found  its  fruition 
in  an  unread  literature,  but  it  is  a  safe  prop- 
osition that  the  dust-covered  theses  of  our 
graduate  colleges  would  make  a  bonfire  of 
very  respectable  flame. 

There  are  numbers  of  those  fresh  from 
graduate  study  who,  if  they  can  not  write, 
will  insist  upon  lecturing.  They  would  feel 
themselves  very  common  to  speak  of  teach- 
ing, so  they  go  not  to  the  classroom  but  to 
the  "lecture-room."  If  the  colleges  in  re- 
cent years  have  suffered  from  one  thing  more 
157 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

than  another,  it  seems  probable  that  it  is 
from  the  attempt  to  use  the  methods  of  the 
graduate  school  in  undergraduate  work.  It 
should  never  be  forgotten  that,  according  to 
its  etymological  signification,  education 
means  a  leading  forth,  or  a  drawing  out,  a 
development.  The  immature  mind  can  not 
be  developed  by  the  "pouring  in"  process. 
Maturing  intellectual  powers  grow  by  exer- 
cise, and  there  is  no  better  exercise  for  the 
youthful  mind  than  the  old-fashioned  reci- 
tation method.  The  Socratic  system  of  ques- 
tions and  answers  amplified  in  such  a  way 
as  to  bring  the  growing  man  to  his  feet  to 
show  by  concise  English,  in  properly  related 
sentences,  the  results  of  his  study,  is  the 
ideal  method.  Nothing  more  vicious  in  our 
modern  educational  system  has  shown  itself 
than  this  stifling  of  unfolding  manhood  by 
the  so-called  "lecture  plan."  The  real  col- 
lege requires  its  professors,  first  of  all,  to 
be  teachers.  They  are  teachers  by  the  in- 
spiration of  their  scholarship  and  their  in- 
sistence upon  clearness  of  understanding 
and  accuracy  of  statement  in  the  classroom. 
158 


FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

Above  all,  they  are  teachers  in  their  homes, 
on  the  campus,  and  on  the  streets,  by  the 
lives  they  live  before  their  students,  whose 
close  inspection  they  can  not  escape  either 
by  night  or  by  day.  In  the  real  college  the 
teacher  necessarily  lives  so  close  to  those  he 
teaches  that  the  impress  of  his  character  is 
left  upon  them  whether  he  will  or  not.  The 
educator  who  aspires  to  a  Bohemian  exist- 
ence would  do  well  to  find  a  position  in  a 
great  university,  where  his  unconventional 
manner  of  living  will  remain  undiscovered, 
rather  than  in  the  real  college,  where  he  will 
be  known  and  read  of  all. 

It  is  inconceivable  that  one  can  be  the 
right  sort  of  teacher  in  the  real  college  if 
his  daily  life  is  not  ordered  in  accordance 
with  the  highest  standards  of  morality — is 
it  necessary  to  say  Christian  morality? 

The  vulgar  swagger  assumed  by  some 
college  and  university  professors  in  this  lat- 
ter day  would  be  pitiable  if  it  were  not  posi- 
tively mischievous.  Time  was  when  the  man 
who  taught  in  college  believed  that  his  life 
159 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

should  be  one  of  consecration  to  the  highest 
ideals  of  character.  He  believed  that  all 
questionable  conduct  should  be  avoided.  For 
the  sake  of  his  influence  upon  his  students 
he  consistently  refrained  from  indulging 
himself  in  those  diversions  which  to  men  oc- 
cupying less  responsible  positions  might  be 
occasionally  allowable  if  not  always  per- 
missible. 

It  is  not  an  unusual  thing  in  these  days 
to  see  a  college  professor  with  a  cigar  or 
cigarette  between  his  teeth,  smoking  openly 
before  his  students.  At  the  banquets  attend- 
ant upon  educational  assemblies  and  learned 
societies  not  only  is  after-dinner  smoking 
common,  but  the  wineglass  has  become  indis- 
pensable. In  the  English  universities  many 
of  the  fellows  refuse  to  drink,  not  from  any 
moral  compunctions,  but  because  in  drink- 
ing they  would  seem  common.  There  are 
many  college  teachers  in  this  country  who 
do  not  drink,  but  it  is  a  sad  commentary  on 
higher  education  in  America  that  there  are 
so  many  in  positions  of  educational  leader- 
ship who  are  at  utter  variance  with  the  spirit 
160 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

of  an  age  that,  like  no  other,  stands  for  the 
annihilation  of  the  drink  traffic. 

No  more  hateful  spectacle  confronts  ad- 
vancing civilization  than  a  beer-sipping, 
wine-bibbing,  college  professor.  He  is  hate- 
ful because  he  is  incongruous.  More  than 
that,  he  is  hateful  because  of  the  havoc  he 
works  as  an  iconoclast  in  the  beautiful  temple 
of  youthful  ideals.  It  is  a  safe  prediction 
that  in  the  near  coming  day,  when  the  Ameri- 
can saloon  is  only  an  historic  tradition,  the 
college  professor  who  drinks  in  public  or  in 
private  will  not  be  tolerated  beyond  the 
meeting  of  the  board  of  trustees  succeeding 
his  discovery. 

To  be  correct  in  his  habits  of  scholarship 
and  in  his  domestic,  religious,  political,  and 
social  life  is  essential  to  the  highest  success 
of  the  professor  in  our  real  college.  To  be 
aggressive  in  his  attempts  to  reach  his  stu- 
dents by  a  direct  influence  for  good  outside 
the  classroom  is  to  realize  largely  on  the  op- 
portunities for  personal  contact  possible 
only  in  the  real  college. 

There  is  ground  for  fear  that  over-much 
11  161 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

anxiety  to  maintain  a  high  intellectual  stand- 
ard in  our  colleges  has  led  to  the  pitiless 
crushing  of  those  possessed  of  great  likeli- 
hood for  usefulness.  If  the  high-grade  col- 
lege has  any  excuse  whatever  for  its  ex- 
istence, it  is  found  in  its  possibilities  for  the 
inspiration  of  individual  instruction.  It  is, 
of  course,  easiest  to  require  a  student  to 
come  up,  with  the  rest  of  the  class,  to  a 
certain  grade,  and  if  he  fails,  to  refuse  him 
permission  to  return.  The  highest  skill  of 
the  teacher  is  shown,  however,  not  in  mak- 
ing something  out  of  a  genius.  He  who  can 
take  the  dullard,  or  the  indifferent  one,  or 
the  happy-go-lucky  youth,  or  the  unpromis- 
ing one,  and  fire  him  with  a  resolution  that 
will  lead  to  achievement,  is  an  artist,  and 
the  beneficent  results  of  his  work  will  widen 
with  the  successive  generations  to  the  end 
of  time.  It  is  only  in  the  real  college  that 
such  accomplishments  are  possible. 

A  recent  writer  in   World's   Work  has 
prophesied  the  coming  of  a  day  when  we 
shall  have  in  our  leading  educational  insti- 
tutions a  Chair  of  Eugenics.    The  world  of 
162 


FACULTY  OF  THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

scholarship  will  extend  cordial  welcome  to 
the  coming  of  the  expert  who  shall  teach  the 
rising  generations  how  to  make  future  gen- 
erations well  born.  After  all,  though,  the 
expert  who  takes  the  man  already  born  and 
teaches  him  how  to  live  is  rendering  the 
largest  service  to  those  that  are  yet  unborn. 
It  is  proper  to  indulge  the  hope  that  the  day 
is  not  far  distant  when,  in  every  college,  we 
shall  have  a  Professor  of  Individual  Atten- 
tion. This  man  will  have  taken  his  graduate 
study  in  human  temperaments.  He  will  be 
a  student  of  ancestry  and  prenatal  influences. 
He  will  know  what  to  expect  as  the  product 
of  certain  environments.  He  will  know  how 
to  remedy  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  and 
physical  ill-health  which  is  the  result  of 
previous  faulty  teaching.  He  will  not  only 
be  a  master  of  applied  psychology,  but  as 
well  of  applied  physiology.  He  will  make  it 
his  business  when  he  comes  to  his  college 
chair  to  provide  himself  with  statistics  as  to 
every  Freshman.  He  will  arm  himself  with 
facts  as  to  the  parents  of  every  new  student, 
his  former  teachers,  his  habits  of  life,  his 
163 


THE  KEAL  COLLEGE 

inclinations  and  his  tendencies,  his  likes  and 
his  dislikes.  He  will  revise  these  individual 
records  as  students  proceed  on  their  way 
through  college.  When  a  student  gives  his 
first  indication  of  failure  he  will  be  referred 
to  this  Professor  of  Individual  Attention, 
who,  knowing  more  about  the  youth  than  the 
youth  knows  of  himself,  will  approach  him 
from  the  right  direction  and,  instead  of  al- 
lowing him  to  be  thrown  out,  he  will  save 
him  to  a  useful  career  that  will  honor  his 
Alma  Mater. 

There  are  some  living  men  who  in  stu- 
dent days  were  tossed  out  of  college  as 
worthless  or  hopelessly  dissolute,  who  have 
afterward  lived  useful,  successful,  and  hon- 
orable lives.  It  has  sometimes  happened 
that  the  college  which  has  discarded  them 
has  later  been  glad  to  confer  honorary  de- 
grees on  those  who  in  the  critical  period  of 
their  lives  it  made  no  serious  effort  to  save. 

After  all,  though,  no  Professor  of  Indi- 
vidual Attention,  no  number  of  personal  pre- 
ceptors, can  do  the  work  of  the  professors 
who  fill  the  usual  college  chairs.  There  is 
164 


FACULTY  OF  THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

no  way  of  escape  from  responsibility  for  him 
who  teaches  any  subject.  He  who  is  master 
of  his  particular  line  of  academic  specializa- 
tion, who  knows  his  students  by  name,  who 
greets  them  with  a  pleasant  word,  who  pos- 
sesses a  genuine  sympathy  for  youth,  who 
lives  an  exalted  life,  and  who  denies  himself 
to  go  out  in  aggressive  activity  for  the  de- 
velopment of  a  higher  life  among  those  he 
teaches,  and  whose  incentive  to  labor  comes 
as  the  result  of  a  life  itself  transformed  by 
the  spirit  of  Christ,  is  the  real  teacher.  He 
will  accentuate  his  influence  if  he  writes 
some  books  and  is  known  in  the  great  out- 
side world,  but  he  will  be  loyal  to  his  insti- 
tution, cordially  supporting  all  just  author- 
ity, unselfishly  co-operating  with  his  col- 
leagues and  living  every  day  with  a  passion 
that  finds  its  gratification  in  the  service  of 
humanity.  Men  of  such  purposes  serving  as 
members  of  the  faculty  will  be  powerful  in 
the  making  of  the  real  college. 


165 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE  MAN 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE  MAN* 

The  college  man  is  sui  generis.  Seen 
through  the  sordid  eyes  of  the  man  of  the 
world,  he  is  a  worthless  hnlk  of  hopeless 
egotism.  He  is  an  object  of  abuse  at  the 
hands  of  porcine  men  who  would  refuse  to 
exuberant  youth  a  legitimate  outlet  for  sur- 
plus vitality,  while  they  boast  themselves 
practical  as  they  fatten  at  the  sour  swill- 
trough  of  dishonest  business  methods.  The 
college  man  is  held  up  to  public  ridicule  by 
the  cheap  paragraphist  who  has  failed  to 
avail  himself  of  advantages  which  might 
have  lifted  him  above  the  level  of  a  tolerated 
nuisance.  The  vulgar  populace,  in  changing 
mood,  makes  the  student  the  subject  of  ma- 
licious criticism  or  churlish  raillery. 

Viewed  objectively,  our  college  man  is  a 
biped  with  bifurcated  hair  hanging  low  on 

*  This  chapter  is  a  vagrant.  It  was  not  written  in  connection 
with  those  preceding  it  in  this  book.  "The  Real  College  Man  " 
is  an  after-dinner  address  delivered  at  numerous  college  ban- 
quets. It  is  reproduced  in  this  connection  because  it  is  a  con- 
crete resum6  of  the  purpose  of  the  real  college  as  hereinbefore 
set  forth.— G.  P.  B. 

169 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

either  side,  leaving  only  a  triangle  of  ques- 
tionable whiteness  above  the  eyebrows.  If 
he  wears  a  head-covering  of  any  sort  above 
this  tousled  thicket  it  is  a  cap,  in  color  of 
blinding  red,  or  bine,  or  green,  or  yellow, 
and  of  a  " Happy  Hooligan' '  circumference; 
or,  mayhap,  it  is  a  flat  and  well-nigh  brimless 
hat  with  a  wide  band,  fit  rival  for  the  coat 
of  Joseph,  the  patriarch.  His  necktie  can  be 
heard  three  squares  away.  Beneath  his  vest- 
less  coat,  his  wide  expanse  of  negligee  shirt- 
front,  displayed  on  a  station  platform,  would 
prevent  a  disastrous  train-wreck  if  the  block 
should  fail  to  work.  His  belted  and  suspen- 
derless  trousers  are  a  perpetual  source  of 
anxiety  to  friends  fearful  of  his  reputation 
for  decency.  His  striped  socks,  set  into  the 
latest  cut  of  topless  shoes,  under  turned-up 
pantaloons,  complete  a  picture  that  make 
the  lower  extremities  a  fit  termination  for 
the  spectacular  beginning  at  the  top. 

Heard  objectively,  the  college  man  is  a 
creature  of  abnormal  lungs  from  which  come 
forth  the  bellowings  of  yellings  and  the  ear- 
splitting  notes  of  rollicking  song. 
170 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  MAN 

It  is  this  superficially  objective  present- 
ment that  makes  the  collegian  a  creature  of 
loathing  to  the  womanly  man,  a  public  men- 
ace to  the  omniscient  editor,  and  a  thorn  in 
the  flesh  of  the  petty  officer  of  the  peace. 
These  irascible  individuals,  who  themselves 
never  had  any  youth  or,  if  they  had,  buried 
it  in  oblivion  so  long  ago  that  it  is  eternally 
lost  to  memory,  would  clothe  the  college  stu- 
dent in  creaseless,  broad-brimmed  black  hat, 
Prince  Albert  coat,  side-buttoned  trousers, 
cloth  gaiters,  boiled  shirt,  celluloid  collar, 
cambric  tie,  and  a  solemn  face,  and  then  call 
it  a  man.    God  save  the  mark ! 

There  must  be  something  more  than  this 
objective  side  to  the  man  who  later  in  life 
finds  himself  a  part  of  the  great  body  of 
the  college-trained  that  compose  sixty-nine 
per  cent  of  the  eleven  thousand  three  hun- 
dred and  eighty-four  people  of  the  nation 
whose  names  appear  in  "Who  's  Who  in 
America."  He  must  be  worth  something,  or 
he  would  not  find  his  way  to  leadership  in 
the  halls  of  Congress,  to  the  dignity  of  the 
Supreme  Bench,  and  to  the  power  of  the  Ex- 
171 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

ecutive  Chair.  He  is  more  than  ordinary, 
or  he  would  not  predominate  in  the  field  of 
literature,  while  he  leads  at  the  bar,  and  in 
medicine,  and  monopolizes  the  pulpit.  Yes, 
cut  away  the  excrescences,  plunge  the  knife 
into  the  brain,  drive  it  deep  into  the  heart 
of  the  college  student,  and  you  find  the  nu- 
cleus of  a  real  man. 

The  college  man  is  a  likable  chap.  I 
have  lived  with  him  so  long  that  I  could  not 
be  happy  without  him.  He  makes  a  sur- 
rounding that  preserves  the  spirit  of  eter- 
nal youth.  It  is  unthinkable  to  me  that  one 
could  grow  old  in  living  with  him.  I  love 
him  because  of  his  possibilities.  I  would  not 
change  him  one  whit.  I  want  him  with  his 
spirit  of  joyous  optimism.  His  college  yell 
is  as  the  music  of  the  morning  to  my  soul. 
I  am  willing  to  take  him  as  he  is — thatched 
head,  cuffs  on  trousers,  and  all.  These  are 
the  outward  symbols  of  an  inward  enthusi- 
asm that  prophesies  an  aggressive  man  to 
whom  some  day  this  old  world  will  listen. 

Viewed  subjectively,  for  he  has  his  sub- 
jective as  well  as  his  objective  side,  the  col- 
172 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  MAN 

lege  man  is  an  individnal  of  limitless  pros- 
pects for  usefulness.  His  possibilities  con- 
stitute the  measure  of  his  responsibility. 
His  opportunities  for  the  development  of  his 
talents  and  the  growth  of  a  stalwart  char- 
acter place  within  his  grasp  a  life  of  influ- 
ence that  will  widen  with  successive  genera- 
tions to  the  end  of  time  and  that  will  main- 
tain its  power  through  all  eternity. 

The  real  college  man  is  indispensable  to 
civilization,  but  the  real  college  man  is  pro- 
duced only  by  the  real  college.  When  the 
word  " college"  is  mentioned  there  loom  big 
before  us  thoughts  of  a  beautiful  campus, 
groups  of  buildings,  adequate  equipment, 
the  teaching  of  the  humanities,  the  arts  and 
sciences,  scholarly  professors,  and  hurry- 
ing crowds  of  young  people.  But  all  these 
do  not  make  a  college.  The  real  college  is 
campus,  buildings,  equipment,  courses,  teach- 
ers, and  students,  plus  that  intangible  but 
indispensable  something  that  we  call  an  at- 
mosphere. A  proper  environment  is  the 
first  condition  of  a  true  college  atmosphere. 
There  must  be  a  real  college  community.  If 
173 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE 

the  institution  be  located  in  a  great  city, 
there  must  needs  be  an  institutional  life- 
center,  a  college  heart.  That  Columbia  Uni- 
versity and  The  College  of  the  City  of  New 
York  are  not  types  of  the  real  college  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  students  there  meet  their 
professors  only  for  a  brief  hour  in  the  lec- 
ture-room and  know  them  only  at  a  distance, 
without  themselves  being  known  by  those 
who  instruct.  Students  do  not  even  know 
each  other  except  within  the  limitations  of 
their  own  small  circle  of  intimates  in  these 
institutions,  for  when  lectures  are  ended  they 
scatter  all  over  that  great  city,  and  their 
identity  as  collegians  is  hopelessly  lost  in 
the  swirling  crowd  of  commercialism.  Is 
it  any  wonder  that  Columbia  University  has 
no  football  team  worthy  of  the  name?  For- 
mer President  Seth  Low  may  have  been 
right  when  he  declared  that  Columbia  Uni- 
versity should  develop  along  the  lines  of 
least  resistance  and  make  of  itself  a  collec- 
tion of  graduate  and  professional  colleges, 
leaving  the  pure  college  work  to  be  done  by 
those  institutions  located  in  more  secluded 
174 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  MAN 

places  friendly  to  the  growth  of  true  college 
life.  There  are  institutions,  though,  in  the 
large  cities  that  have  demonstrated  that  a 
college  community  is  possible  in  a  crowded 
center.  The  University  of  Chicago  is  strong 
in  its  college  spirit.  The  far-seeing  vision 
of  President  Harper,  master  college  builder 
of  the  world,  revealed  to  him  the  importance 
of  making  the  university  itself  the  center 
where  students  would  of  necessity  pass  the 
greater  part  of  their  time.  What  has  been 
done  there  can  be  done  in  large  measure  in 
other  city  colleges.  Dormitories,  student 
buildings,  commons,  clubhouses,  and  fre- 
quent convocations  will  keep  students  jos- 
tling against  each  other,  and  constantly 
touching  elbows  with  professors  in  such  a 
way  that  a  college  consciousness  will  spring 
into  being.  It  will,  of  course,  be  admitted 
that  a  smaller  town  which  exists  primarily 
because  of  the  institution  in  its  midst  will 
more  easily  lend  itself  to  the  development 
of  a  college  community  than  a  large  city. 
It  is  because  of  such  locations  that  Yale  and 
Dartmouth  and  Princeton  and  Michigan  are 
175 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

so  strong  in  community  life  and  spirit.  And 
yet,  in  a  small  city  like  Ann  Arbor,  when  I 
visited  there  last,  three  years  ago,  students 
and  faculties  were  clamoring  loudly  for  a 
student  building  on  the  campus,  where  all 
might  come  to  know  each  other  better  and 
cultivate  the  feeling  of  college  fellowship. 

If  it  be  true  that  a  college  community  is 
essential,  it  is  equally  true  that  size  is  an- 
other important  factor  in  producing  a  col- 
lege atmosphere.  A  caravansary  is  hostile 
to  good  air.  Medical  colleges,  law  schools, 
engineering  shops,  and  barns  for  animal 
husbandry  do  not  make  a  real  college.  It 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  a  college  is  not 
in  any  sense  of  the  word  a  technical  or  a 
professional  school.  The  real  college  pre- 
sents the  humanities,  the  arts,  and  the  pure 
sciences.  It  provides  the  discipline  and  cul- 
ture which  will  best  fit  men  to  enjoy  life 
and  that  will  prepare  them  for  a  more  in- 
telligent later  study  in  the  lines  of  their 
chosen  specialization.  In  the  formative  days 
of  college  life  the  associations  and  compan- 
ionships are  of  no  less  value  than  the  work 
176 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE  MAN 

required  for  graduation.  The  college  day  is 
a  care-free  period,  and  the  friendships  there 
formed  and  the  pleasures  there  enjoyed 
abide  forever  as  the  aroma  of  fragrant  in- 
cense, sweetening  life  through  all  the  busy 
years  that  follow.  That  such  a  college  with 
these  glorious  associations  can  exist  in  a 
large  institution  is  not  questioned.  It  can 
not  exist,  however,  if  it  be  overshadowed  by 
the  magnified  importance  of  trades-schools 
and  graduate  colleges  round  about  it.  To 
have  a  real  college  in  a  great  university,  the 
college  of  liberal  arts,  though  small  in  its 
student  body,  should  be  the  nucleus  of  the 
university  life  and  should  be  built  up  by  the 
authorities  as  a  necessary  stepping-stone  to 
the  successful  later  work  in  the  utilitarian 
departments  of  instruction.  It  will  be  ad- 
mitted, though,  that  the  college  in  isolation 
has  less  opposition  in  maintaining  its  ideals 
and  that  the  purest  college  atmosphere  is  at- 
tainable where  numbers  are  not  so  great  as 
to  prevent  free  circulation  and  easy  and  con- 
tinuous social  intercourse.  Five  hundred  to 
six  hundred  students  are  enough  to  make  a 
12  177 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

real  college;  more  than  that  many  would 
stifle  the  atmosphere.  It  is  this  exclusive- 
ness  in  numbers  that  has  given  to  Amherst 
and  Williams  and  Bowdoin  and  Wesleyan 
their  distinction. 

The  ideals  of  an  institution,  too,  con- 
tribute in  no  small  measure  to  the  making 
of  an  atmosphere.  The  responsibility  for 
institutional  ideals,  in  the  main,  rests  on  the 
governing  body.  If  the  president  and  fac- 
ulty constitute  themselves  an  oligarchy,  seek- 
ing a  rule  of  tyranny,  the  college  air  will 
hang  heavy  in  its  oppressiveness.  A  com- 
pany of  college  students  is  easily  controlled 
when  properly  directed;  it  is  the  easiest 
body  in  the  world  to  antagonize  by  improper 
methods.  It  should  be  assumed  that  he  who 
is  old  enough  to  go  to  college  is  old  enough 
to  be  a  man.  There  is  no  class  on  earth 
which  so  quickly  and  so  bitterly  resents  the 
crack  of  the  whip  as  that  composed  of  those 
who  have  but  just  been  emancipated  from 
apron-strings.  This  is  as  it  should  be.  The 
youth  mature  enough  to  leave  his  mother  is 
sufficiently  mature  to  be  treated  as  an  adult. 
178 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  MAN 

What  a  wonderful  opportunity  is  open  to  the 
college  president  at  this  critical  period!  If 
he  will  but  appeal  to  his  students  as  men, 
they  will  respond  to  his  appeal.  All  ijie 
threats  and  all  the  dire  penalties  imposed 
by  the  college  faculties  of  the  olden  day  did 
not  prevent  the  theft  of  the  bell-clapper, 
the  shaving  of  horses'  tails,  the  pollution  of 
wells,  the  inartistic  decoration  of  buildings, 
the  destruction  of  property,  indignities  to 
fellow  students,  and  a  tone  of  universal  dis- 
respect. In  the  real  college  of  our  modern 
day  there  is  absence  of  petty  rules,  and  the 
sympathy  existing  between  teachers  and 
taught  is  so  pronounced,  without  sacrifice  of 
professorial  dignity,  that  vandalism  has  be- 
come history,  and  respect  for  man  and  rev- 
erence for  God  are  enthroned  in  student  life. 
The  new  is  everywhere  supplanting  the  old, 
and  the  real  college  is  an  atmosphere  where 
the  standard  of  excellence  is  all-round  man- 
hood. 

One  thing  more  is  yet  needed  to  produce 
the  perfect  college  atmosphere,  and  that  is 
Tradition.    It  is  worth  while  to  have  a  his- 
179 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

tory.  An  institution  may  have  all  the  other 
requisites,  but  until  it  has  hoary  years  re- 
plete with  honor  behind  it,  the  atmosphere 
will  lack  the  bracing  quality  that  makes 
young  blood  tingle.  The  student  who  has 
found  his  way  to  a  college  atmosphere 
fraught  with  sacred  traditions  will  be 
spurred  to  highest  endeavor  as  with  Words- 
worth he  reverently  declares:  "I  could  not 
print  ground  where  the  grass  had  yielded  to 
the  steps  of  generations  of  illustrious  men, 
unmoved.  I  could  not  always,  lightly  pass 
through  the  same  gateways,  sleep  where  they 
had  slept,  wake  where  they  had  waked,  range 
that  enclosure  old,  that  garden  of  great  in- 
tellects, undisturbed. ' ' 

The  college,  then,  of  comely  campus, 
good  equipment,  rich  curricula,  competent 
teachers,  and  wide-awake  students,  in  an  at- 
mosphere made  redolent  by  the  right  envi- 
ronment, the  proper  numbers,  lofty  ideals, 
and  honorable  annals,  is  the  real  college,  and 
there  we  shall  find  the  real  college  man. 

The  real  college  man,  breathing  such  an 
atmosphere  as  this,  is  a  patriot.  He  believes 
180 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE  MAN 

in  his  institution,  he  rejoices  in  its  victories, 
and  contributes  to  their  multiplication.  It 
has  always  been  a  mystery  to  me,  and  the 
mystery  deepens  with  every  added  day,  why 
it  is  that  certain  sanctimonious  individuals 
pucker  up  their  sour  faces  and,  if  possible, 
look  more  acetose  than  common  whenever 
their  ears  are  greeted  with  a  college  yell. 
There  is  no  music  in  all  the  world  so  sweet 
to  me  as  the  yell  of  my  own  college  coming 
from  the  lusty  lungs  of  my  own  students. 
It  is  the  expression  of  abounding  life,  of 
healthful  youth,  of  unselfish  loyalty.  I  know 
that  every  time  a  boy  yells  for  his  college 
he  is  drawing  its  colors  about  him  a  little 
more  securely,  and  I  know,  too,  that  he  is 
laying  the  foundation  for  that  larger  patri- 
otism which  in  later  years  will  accentuate 
his  love  of  country  every  time  he  gives  a 
cheer  for  the  Stars  and  Stripes. 

Let  that  fossil  who  declaims  against  foot- 
ball be  relegated  to  the  museum  of  the  an- 
tiquities! Let  dumbness  strike  him  who 
would  use  his  voice  against  the  songs  and 
shouts  of  joyous  college  men  when  they  tri- 
181 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

umph  in  oratory  or  debate!  Palsied  be  the 
arm  of  the  tyrant  who  would  reach  out  a 
hand  to  throttle  class  spirit !  Blinded  be  the 
eyes  of  him  who  will  see  nothing  but  evil 
in  devotion  to  fraternity!  We  live  in  an 
age  when  gentleness  and  regard  for  the 
rights  of  others  are  our  watchwords  of 
progress;  but  to  make  our  civilization  all  it 
should  be,  there  must  be  some  iron  in  the 
blood.  The  real  college  man  is  fearless  in 
his  loyalty  to  his  college,  and  this  fearless 
loyalty  is  a  preparation  for  the  larger  pa- 
triotism which  will  show  itself  in  unflinching 
devotion  to  righteousness  in  the  service  of 
society  and  the  State  when  maturer  years 
have  come. 

The  real  college  man  is  a  scholar  as  well 
as  a  patriot.  Indeed,  it  is  impossible  to  form 
any  conception  of  loyalty  in  disassociation 
from  obligation.  The  supreme  duty  of  the 
college  man  is  work.  It  is  the  consciousness 
of  work  faithfully  done  that  makes  possible 
the  other  side  of  his  college  life.  He  who 
permits  his  college  to  provide  him  with  a 
disciplined  mind  and  a  refined  taste  is  ac- 
182 


THE  REAL  COLLEGE  MAN 

cepting  an  equipment  that  will  bring  to  his 
later  years  a  satisfaction  in  living  amply 
compensating  him  for  the  lack  of  many 
grosser  comforts.  To  be  able  to  think 
clearly  and  to  reason  wisely,  to  possess  a 
sane  judgment,  to  have  an  appreciation  of 
the  fine  things  in  literature,  in  art,  and  in 
history,  is  to  have  the  joyful  consciousness 
of  a  life  that  is  high  above  the  common-place. 

Last  of  all,  our  real  college  man  is  a  man 
of  character.  He  is  plain,  unassuming  good- 
ness. He  has  good  red  blood  in  his  veins, 
but  he  knows  that  the  greatest  triumph  pos- 
sible to  mortal  man  is  that  victory  over  self 
which  subdues  the  passions,  controls  appe- 
tite, directs  desire,  commands  reverence,  and 
establishes  honesty.  The  real  college  will 
keep  ever  before  its  students  for  their  emu- 
lation the  blameless  character  of  Him  who 
was  both  God  and  man,  and  seeking  to  fash- 
ion their  ideals  after  this  life,  college  men 
will  be  firmly  established  in  every  good  word 
and  work. 

Then,  blessings  on  the  college  man !  Ma- 
tured in  the  atmosphere  of  the  real  college, 
183 


THE  EEAL  COLLEGE 

he  is  the  most  hopeful  prophecy  of  our  na- 
tional salvation.  Let  him  wash  and  dress 
and  comb  as  he  will!  Love  him  for  all  that 
he  is  and  for  all  that  he  may  be.  His  pa- 
triotism, his  scholarship,  and  his  character 
will  make  him  the  mightiest  potentiality  of 
fntnre  years  in  dethroning  " Graft' '  and  in 
crushing  Tyranny.  He  will  be  the  finest  ex- 
ponent of  public  and  private  honesty  in  our 
American  life,  for  when  cap  is  discarded, 
when  hair  is  cut,  and  when  trousers  are  un- 
rolled, we  shall  find  that  the  real  college  has 
given  to  the  world  a  real  man. 


184 


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